


Embrace, Extend, Exterminate

by gingersbakery



Category: Villainous (Cartoon)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Explicit Language, Eye Trauma, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Medical Experimentation, Multi, Psychological Horror, Reader-Insert, References to Drugs, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:42:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25404040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingersbakery/pseuds/gingersbakery
Summary: Ever since your luckless forefather sold his struggling bank and the souls of his future descendants to the mysterious entity known as Black Hat, your family has toiled for generations behind the scenes at Black Hat’s evil investment bank. Your hard work and cutthroat approach to the family business has served you well until now, but unfortunately you still need to prove yourself to the very villain that owns your soul by contract (as well as his reprobate lackeys). Failure is not an option. [Tags updated as story progresses]
Relationships: Black Hat & Demencia (Villainous), Black Hat & Dr. Flug (Villainous), Black Hat (Villainous) & Reader, Black Hat (Villainous)/Reader, Demencia (Villainous) & Reader, Dr. Flug (Villainous) & Reader, Dr. Flug (Villainous)/Reader
Comments: 26
Kudos: 87





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I know this is ostensibly a reader-insert story (the wackest of wack fic genres), but in my defense, I enjoy reading and writing in the second person so that's what this is gonna be. Sorry!  
> Be warned, this is a very fleshed out reader-insert, and by fleshed out I mean they are an absolute fucking bastard. Their lack of redeeming qualities means I can guiltlessly torture them physically and mentally at the hands of our favorite villains. Who knows, I may end up rewriting this whole thing with a regular oc eventually.  
> If you dislike reader inserts, please give this a try anyway, you might find it's your cup of tea. I also must admit, this is the first fic I've attempted to write in years and I still can't believe it's for this cringy-ass show. How embarrassing. Luckily I have no shame.  
> \- Ginger

Generations ago, back when your glistening city was a mere trading post, your reckless forefather, Augustus Lai, sold his struggling bank (and soul) to an entity known as Black Hat in exchange for eternal success. Due to a profound lack of foresight, or perhaps desperation, the agreed-upon terms stated within the contract and sealed with blood were powerful and grim.

Thanks to Black Hat and his newest subordinate, your family’s banking operation abruptly and violently snaked its way into international renown. Black Hat’s innovative approach to investment villainy needed a reputable and influential institute with which to execute his financial deeds. Your family became the de facto leaders of the largest banking conglomerate the world has ever seen, and all for the benefit of evil.

The wealth and power Black Hat ensured your great-grandfather came at the mere price of every single one of his blood descendants henceforth belonging to the organization for life. His children, and his children’s children, would work for the bank from the moment they could do basic arithmetic. 

The smartest and worthiest would rise through the ranks, but only the most diabolical and ruthless would earn the coveted responsibilities of managing the largest and most essential financial endeavors of Black Hat himself. The rest of the family, with their varying and deficient levels of evilness, would be relegated to less important roles.

As such, your whole existence has been a bitter contest between you and your relatives to prove themselves worthy of spearheading Black Hat Organization Banking Affiliates (BHOBA).

After a quarter century of studying, training, cheating, and sabotaging your associates (there's little room for love in such a cutthroat business, even among family), you've finally reached the top. The coveted title of Executive Director has been bestowed upon you by your late-great father, much to the contempt of your siblings. 

Your celebration is short-lived, however. Your father's untimely death in a boating accident means your new career starts right goddamn now. You're not going to disappoint Black Hat on your first day, are you? Get moving. Those acquisitions aren't going to merge themselves, you know.


	2. Entreat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Your job starts now. Black Hat decides not to disembowel you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you don't like gross and slimy black hat, I don't know what to tell you. He's just putrid in my eyes and I wouldn't have him any other way.

It’s 2 pm, too early to drink, but that’s never stopped you before. You’ve just returned home to your 85th floor loft apartment, being the first one to excuse yourself from your father’s funeral. You dipped as soon as the procession started, to be honest. Not like you would hang around to socialize, as no one’s even bothered to speak to you since your promotion.

Inauguration. Life mission. 

Call it what you like, the collective resentment now emanating from your family towards you is palpable without even entering the room. It’s disgusting. You can sense it in every corner of this godforsaken skyscraper. You’ve lived here your whole life and the place is built like a citadel, but you’ve never felt less secure now that you’re the one on top of the pile. 

Up here though, you’re finally, blissfully, alone. Money at least buys that.

A drink is definitely in order. As you peel off your uncomfortable heels and pitch your jacket onto a nearby chair, you wonder how much free time you’ll get before you pick up where your father left off. Likely not much, considering the specific industry. No rest for the wicked, after all. 

You’re not in a celebratory mood. One would think being promoted to Executive Director of the most powerful banking institute in the galaxy would give you a rush, but after the funeral arrangements for dad and a full week of dodging unsophisticated would-be assassinations from your siblings, you’d rather drink to forget. 

Tomorrow morning you’re to gather with your immediate family for the will-reading, executor being your conniving bitch of an uncle who would just as soon poison you himself then hand over your father’s coveted title and assets to yours truly. Yeah, you’ll want to be hungover for that. Skipping out altogether crosses your mind as you reach for a glass. That’ll show him disrespect.

Tonight can’t be over soon enough, you think to yourself as you palm the button to close the wall-to-wall curtains, snuffing out the glittering skyline and leaving you ensconced in your marble abode. No one representing Black Hat Organization has bothered to contact you yet, but you know it’s only a matter of time. You feel unprepared despite your knowledge of the company specifics. The radio silence has been suspicious and worrisome. 

Second-guessing yourself isn't something you usually waste time on, but you’ve been having more and more irrational thoughts since your father’s accident. His unusual reluctance to disclose the ins and outs of working directly with Black Hat did nothing to quell the stir of anxiety in your guts. 

To your despair, you feel the first inkling of a migraine approaching, and resolve to make your drink a strong one. With any luck you’ll knock yourself out before you suffer too much.

From what little you were aware of, the nature of the financial cases under your new responsibility would require you to make frequent business trips to Hat Island, every month at least. This means arduous airplane voyages and an endless cycle of jetlag, no doubt. Your father practically lived there parts of the year, depending on how much was asked of him. He was sworn to secrecy about his time away, even to you, his protégé. 

As for the leader himself, well. Black Hat is known to be elusive even among the higher ups of your company, and you certainly didn’t have any delusions of a personal encounter unless you came out on top. Yet, here you are, so where is he? 

Crystal glass in hand, you make a beeline for your liquor cabinet when the room suddenly appears a shade or two darker. Something squeals in your ear, and you shake your head to get rid of the annoying sensation but it only intensifies. A strange pressure descends onto the sides of your skull and your spine, usually quite limber, feels like it’s being compressed from the top down. The glass slips from your hand and disintegrates into a thousand glinting shards on the floor.

Before you have a chance to scream, you are struck with the hellish sensation of being _folded_. The squealing in your ears is drowned out by the sound of your own bones and ligaments snapping and vertebrae rolling up into itself. Your shoulders and hips dislocate with a pop and seem to disappear into your abdomen. The sensation of a sudden drop is felt behind your navel before you feel a strong tug in that exact spot, seemingly towards some greater interdimensional space. 

Thankfully the pressure on your spinal cord seemed to block most of the pain after a certain point. Your head meets your toes, caves in on itself, and you wink out of existence with a last, muffled squeal of anguish. 

-

Folding outward is more painful than folding inward, somehow. Your limbs reconstitute and splay outwards, nerves on fire, and you are automatically collapsed into a position of worship upon a very plush and somewhat sticky carpet. Everything around you is some shade of red. Dark red carpet, red walls, nasty red chunks from some unthinkable source on the toe of an expensive black leather shoe. You look up slowly, blinking your sore eyeballs, and are met with the view of a glistening green maw.

Above that, a shining monocle and piercing eye stare at you smugly and somewhat judgmentally. 

“You may rise.” Black Hat rasps. You are compelled to do so.

Black Hat, the big boss, master of your soul, benefactor of your family for some 200-odd years, is larger than life. 

He is uncanny. You’ve seen the portraits in your father’s private office plenty of times, you’ve seen the bust in the conference room reserved for prestigious clients. You were pretty convinced the immortality thing was real, but you always thought the real thing would look different, more realistic somehow. No, he actually just looks that inhuman. You wonder if he's stuck that way, or if it’s a choice on his part. Weird choice, if it is. 

Some self-preserving part of your brain sparks a memory of something your father had once mentioned, not to let your thoughts wander in the presence of Black Hat as he can read minds. _Of course he can_. This immortal incarnation of evil has just summoned you in the most deliberately painful way possible, telepathy is bespoke. 

He looks you up and down with undisguised disdain. Your eyes meet for a brief moment. His teeth and eyes glint at you, and the familiar torture of a migraine rolls through the interior of your skull. Did he do that? _Of course he did._ You wobble, trying not to collapse, vision blurred. Never have you ever felt so inadequate.

That voice like ground glass commands you to sit, and you don’t even look behind you before your knees buckle, but your ass meets a springy and rather comfortable rolling chair that definitely wasn’t there a second ago. Black Hat doesn’t address whatever inane thing you were thinking about, not that you remember anyway. Nothing clears the mind like a migraine.

As best as you can manage with the throbbing pain between your ears, you sit with your spine straight and look up at your new master with your practiced and professional banker face. (A/N: like a poker face, but with more money.) You know better than to speak before you’re spoken to. This is your moment. Just ignore the pain.

Black hat slithers—yes, slithers behind a large and ornate ebony desk, steepling his long gloved fingers in front of that wicked, wicked grin.

“Welcome, my newest subordinate. I trust your journey wasn’t too uncomfortable.” Black Hat gurgles a very unsettling laugh. Flecks of spit fly from his mouth, but of course you are too polite to notice.

“Thank you for receiving me in such an abrupt manner,” you respond carefully, not sure what emotion you should be expressing, if any. Gratitude, perhaps. Something tells you not to mimic the face in front of you. It hovers between a tall silk hat and suit collar like a sickly grey moon, a lipless smile holding teeth like knives. You can see the reflection of your face in his monocle. Sweat visibly beads on your face and neck. 

Black Hat stares at you for a moment longer before telescoping his body towards you like an anaconda, stopping short of your nose. He smells like raw beef. You flinch despite yourself. Your new boss seems somewhat pleased with your reaction, but he’s kind of hard to read so you’re not entirely confident of that.

“You really aren’t fooling anyone with that brave little face, you know. I see it all. I can smell the stench of fear on you and taste your panic.” He jeers, cold fingers pressing against the wet gooseflesh on the back of your neck as he draws closer.

Black Hat continues to muse to himself, mere inches away.

“Weak. Weak and pathetic. The bloodline’s degraded so much I can barely smell it in your veins. If only your fool of a great-great grandfather could see what his family has become. Tell me; why in hell’s name did your idiot father proclaim such a spineless, cowardly wreck as his successor?”

This is a question you’ve asked yourself exactly zero times, as you don’t consider yourself to be an especially cowardly person. Maybe a little confused, in this specific moment. You’re not a coward. Whatever fears you may have once had have long since been purged from your psyche through repeated and torturous childhood training, a necessary preparation for this exact job. This shouldn’t scare you, but your body seems to say otherwise.

Whatever fear response you’re expressing in this moment must be a product of Black Hat’s demonic influence over physical forms, you deduce. This must be how he wants you. 

Through Black Hat’s monocle, you gaze directly into your own dripping face and choose your next words wisely.

“I’m the only one of his heirs smart enough to know when to be afraid, that’s all.” There’s an air of finality in your statements that you didn’t really intend, but you can’t take it back. 

Black Hat blinks the way a crocodile might, nictitating membrane drawing across his bulbous eye. 

There he goes once more with that disgusting laugh, spraying your tightly closed mouth with acrid spittle. He slides upwards and away, putting some well-needed distance between your face and his. A burning sensation in your lungs reminds you that you need to breathe. When you ever stopped, you don’t remember. 

Black Hat continues to chortle and slinks back behind his desk.

“Fair enough! I’ve spied numerous times on your pusillanimous brothers and sisters, they clearly don’t have what it takes. You, however, seem to be the most promising out of your father’s lackluster array of choices. Not surprising that his spawn are weaklings, the rotten apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” 

Your new boss seems to be quite comfortable speaking his mind to you already. Things seem to be going quite well, all things considered. You haven’t been eviscerated yet, that must be a good sign.

“We’ll see how you fare in your father’s shoes, as gutless a man as he was, he was of some occasional use to me.” 

Backhanded compliment or not, you take it with grace. 

“You won’t be disappointed, Lord Black Hat.”

Addressing people of higher rank than you has always felt unnatural, even before your promotion.

As long as you don’t make the mistake of coming off as superior to Black Hat, you’ll probably be fine. It’s a safe wager. You start to become dimly aware of how cold you are, since the sweat has begun to rapidly cool on your skin. The thin black silks you have on do nothing for your comfort. 

Black Hat peers at you once more. His eyebrows twitch. 

“Now, onto business. You must complete the work your father left behind. Three days will suffice. Awfully inconsiderate of him to die before closing a deal, don’t you think?” 

You shrug. 

“I think he should have thought of that before he had an accident, for the company’s sake. He left a lot of loose ends.” 

Black Hat’s mouth hasn’t closed once since you’ve met, but his expression changes to one you are hesitant to describe as perplexion. Well, if your boss expected you to defend your late father, he clearly has more to learn about the dynamic between you two.

The corners of Black Hat’s mouth flicker from a grimace to a grin as he lets out another chortle. Evidently your response was amusing. His weird body movements make it hard to predict where he’s headed, but he once again invades your personal space before you get a chance to politely position yourself away from him and his nauseating fleshy odor.

“Follow me. It’s time you get accustomed to your humble office space. Time is of the essence, and we need your father’s drafts proofed and organized as we've already lost valuable time. I trust you have no objections to the ample deadline you’ve been given.” Black Hat cackles at his non-question. You’re beginning to think his laughter is a sort of vocal tic, instead of genuine expression.

Any enthusiasm or confidence you managed to retain from the conversation has now been replaced with the disturbing notion that your boss expects you to start working _now_ . You discreetly glance around the room for a clock or timepiece, anything that would betray the time of day, but find nothing.

The chair disintegrates under your legs with absolutely no warning and you jump to your feet, knocking unprofessionally into Black Hat’s side. The man does not budge despite your momentum, but upon making contact with him the searing pain that flares up behind your eyeballs causes your knees to buckle and almost give out.

Come to think of it, being in such close proximity to him has made your migraine progressively worse since this meeting began. You make a discreet half step away to attempt to put some distance between you and the demon at your side, but a gloved hand draws you close. Your brain wobbles like pudding in your skull. You'd kill for some sumatriptan right now. Black Hat, either oblivious to your pain but more likely deliberately relishing it, leads you with a snakelike arm around your shoulder towards the ornate double doors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things get a bit more violent in the next chapter. Stay tuned!


	3. Encounter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You meet the doctor and do not hit it off. Demencia puts you in your place.

The dim, almost womb-like ambience of Black Hat’s office is in stark contrast to the clinical hall you’re standing in. From above, the corridor beams with annoying fluorescent lights, the kind you’ve always hated because they tend to trigger your migraines. Like the one you’re suffering from now. You shuffle alongside your new boss, who’s launched into some sort of walking tour, pointing out noteworthy rooms and glass curio cabinets as they come. His voice echoes through the hallway, making his grating tone and cadence seem even more like ground glass in your ears. Silently, you keep your eyes on the greyish floors, at which point you realize you have no shoes, since you removed them before you were interdimensionally pretzeled. _Great._ Let's hope dad kept slippers in his office. Black Hat walks on, sustaining a death grip on your shoulder. If he noticed your shoe problem before, he wasn’t about to acknowledge it.

The boss leads you along the wide corridor and several flights of stairs for what feels like an unrealistic amount of time. Everything looks the same here, perhaps a calculated choice for a villainous headquarters. Security cameras flanking the hall whirr and contract their apertures as you pass by. 

Your feet are practically numb by the time your boss stops before a large, heavy looking metal security door. The lights seem even brighter down this end of the building. You’ve almost gotten used to the headache, by now. 

The doorframe and immediate stretch of hallway that skirts it are plastered with striped yellow caution decals, and there is a large radioactive warning painted on the door in the serrated center seam. Gazing at the sign, you wonder why your dad’s office would need any of this, if this even is his office, but hold your tongue as Black Hat uses some inconceivable telekinetic force to part the doors. The keypad and retina scan on the doorframe are left untouched, and the metal doors open vertically with a rumble. 

Black Hat graciously lets up on the headache-inducing grip he kept on your shoulder and strides through the doorway, leaving you to peer in after him from the threshold. You start with a yelp as the doors begin to close from under your feet, leaping out of the way and into the room. Thankfully no one seemed to notice that. The metal doors hiss and something within the wall slides into place, locking you in.

 _“FLUG!”_ Black Hat’s roar echoes throughout the laboratory (obviously not an office of any sort). A scrawny, weird-looking individual in a white coat emerges from behind an enormous machine suspended from cables and rods in the center of the room, which brings you to note the sheer magnitude of the place. It’s practically an aircraft hangar. The ceiling is immensely tall, possibly to accommodate the assortment of machines and robotic notions in various stages of completion throughout. There’s a metal catwalk and staircase running the perimeter of the lab. Despite the room’s size, the sheer amount of equipment makes it seem quite cluttered. 

Black Hat descends upon the scientist, apparently in mid-grovel, and hisses something about a deadline. Your new boss’s voice has suddenly taken on a tone so aggressive and monstrous it’s difficult to make out what he’s saying. You can surmise with a fair degree of certainty that the sniveling individual currently receiving a verbal flogging is Dr. Flugslys. 

The name is familiar. Obviously you are aware that Black Hat’s most lucrative assets are weapons of mass villainy, concocted by a scientist and veteran employee of the organization. You’ve seen countless inventions, prototypes, and revisions of destructive plans with his name on them since you were in college. Come to think of it, your father must have had to work with him on many occasions, as many important loans and deals involved the doctor’s technology. 

Black Hat, practically on top of Dr. Flugslys now, continues to dish out abuse at a frightening volume and pace. He shows no sign of calming down, and in fact has generated a few flailing tentacles for added effect. You wait patiently beside the door for someone to acknowledge you, but laugh inwardly at seeing Black Hat treat his supposed second-in-command like that while you’ve received much better treatment in your short time here. 

Seeing the more demonic side of Black Hat as a bystander is both thrilling and amusing, especially since the doctor appears to be an absolute pushover. Despite this, you can’t help but feel a bit stressed as you remember your own deadline. Heaven only knows what your father left behind, and what state of completion it may be in. If Black Hat treats his top scientist this savagely, he would probably do the same to you. You resolve to edge around the perimeter of the lab, so you’re not in the way if Black Hat decides to start throwing projectiles. You keep your eyes on the duo and start shuffling sideways.

From under Black Hat’s monstrous form, you see the doctor turn his head as he notices your movement. It’s only then that you register what was so weird about his appearance. He clearly has a brown paper bag covering his head, likely with eyeholes cut out but you can’t tell for sure because he has these dumb cup goggles on over the bag. 

You can safely say you’ve never seen someone so ridiculous. Black Hat has him by the neck and is violently shaking him to and fro. He waves his arms frantically and screams in your direction. 

“Hey, you, stop! AH! Stop moving! Don’t touch anything! Can’t you see I’m running a very —AGH—volatile conductivity test over there?! Who let you in here, even?” 

Black Hat swivels towards you, his beastly teeth and tongue retracting back into his head, tentacles dissolving. He shrinks back down to his regular imposing height and with a final glare at the doctor, drops him to the ground in a heap. You hadn't noticed before, but you are awfully close to what looks like the mounted core of a ray gun, encased in melting, smoking plastic. Recalling the hazard signs from earlier, you quickly take several steps back, avoiding the growing puddle of burned polymer on the metal floor.

Black Hat stares at you for a moment with a chilling expression, then beckons for you to follow him. He walks wordlessly past the doctor, who is in the process of shoving loose screws and change back into his pockets, things evidently dropped while he was airborne. The doctor shoots you a nasty look through his bag, but the effect is somewhat muted due to the bag in question. You ignore him and start after your boss, pointedly kicking a wayward coin on the floor and sending it skittering across the lab. Nerd. 

On the opposite wall, below a metal staircase leading to the lab’s upper walkway, there is a corrugated metal door with a padlock and small reinforced glass window. It’s dark inside. Black Hat stops in front of it and summons a single key from the palm of his hand. He is no longer smiling and treats you with none of the previous charm you had seen in his office. Maybe he’s still pissed at the doctor? You’re not sure what to think.

“This is the office your father used, which I now place under your care. If you have any questions about the integrity of the space or contents within, I will NOT be available for assistance. You have three days to proof and finish the Shi-Bo patent deal. Do not disappoint me.” 

He drops the key into your hand and vanishes in a puff of smoke before you can say “yes, boss.” 

After a moment of befuddled silence, you refocus yourself. You look back towards the large machine in the center of the lab for any sign of that baghead doctor, but he’s nowhere to be found. The key unlocks the padlock with a bit of difficulty, and you then attempt to pull open the door. It’s firmly shut. 

You grasp the handle and give a few hard yanks, hinges finally squealing loose. The force of the door opening knocks you off balance, but you get back up and go inside. Immediately you are struck with the hideous stench of something stale and rotted. Your father was not the type to leave food around his workspace so you have no idea what the source may be, but you fumble for a light switch and a single, bare bulb flickers to life above your head.

The office is a closet. Small, cramped, with a high, claustrophobic ceiling and made more stifling by massive green file cabinets on either side. A plastic folding desk and chair face the wall. You audibly scoff, not sure if this is a prank or not. This is not an office. There aren’t even any windows. Where’s the computer? Calendar? You peer under the desk and spy some familiar plastic slides, of the sort your dad often wore casually. You gratefully slip them onto your numb feet. It’s hard to imagine your father, someone who enjoyed the finer things in life, would agree to spend any amount of time in such a bare and ugly space, let alone get any work done.

That stench, it’s sickening. Holding your nose, you look under the desk for any disturbing objects, but find none. A small tray on the table holds a key ring, likely for the cabinets. You focus on a smallish two-door tucked away beneath the table. There is a key in the lock of the bottom drawer. You pull it open and gag.

Flies stream out from inside the compartment and you frantically claw at your face, shooing them away. Whatever is in this drawer is completely fucking rotten. A quick glance inside and you actually vomit, pitching over and gagging up nothing but bile. You haven’t eaten all day, a blessing and a curse. Wiping spit from your chin, you turn on your heels and march briskly out of the closet. 

If this is supposed to be hazing, you’ve seen worse. Doesn’t mean you’re not pissed off, however.

The doctor is back, working on whatever he was doing before, but at the sight of you power walking towards him with fury in your eyes, he gets up from his chair and positions himself behind his drafting table somewhat defensively.

“Excuse me, hi. Pardon the interruption just now, you must be Doctor Flugslice, I’m the new finance exec, pleasure to meet you, _would you happen to know why there’s a dead raccoon in my desk drawer?_ ” You rapid-fire blurt one long, frantic sentence at him. The doctor looks at you with an expression of practiced indifference, arms folded across his chest. He pauses a moment before responding to you.

“It’s Flugslys. ESS-EL-WHY-ESS, short y sound. You should just call me Doctor Flug if you can’t manage it.”

The urge to reach across the table and puncture a hole through this man’s stupid bag is extremely strong, but you swallow the lump of agitation building in your throat and stand firm. You do your best to make eye contact through the doctor’s darkened lenses and take a shaky breath through your nose. Calm down.

“Ohh-kay, duly noted. Again. Would you happen to know why there’s a _dead raccoon_ in my desk drawer?!” 

When voicing the latter part of the question, your tone involuntarily rises to a level of shrillness rarely unleashed and you remind yourself to take another deep breath. Be professional, despite everything. At least you can breathe properly in the lab now there’s some appropriate distance between you and the foul rotting carcass stench. You release your hands from the fists you’ve balled them into, fingers twitching and palms sore from the indents of your nails.

Doctor Flug glances past your shoulder at the open door you came from, flies visibly carousing in the surrounding air. He holds his hands up in an exaggerated shrug. 

“Can’t say I know why, but I do know who most likely put it there. As for disposal, you can use the incineration chute in the corner. There’s a big sign, can’t miss it.”

His bag crinkles as he gestures towards the far end of the lab with his chin. The Doctor has a slight lisp, which would be pathetic if he wasn’t so self-satisfied. Actually, scratch that, it’s still pathetic. You have one more question for him.

“Do you have a pair of gloves I can use? And bleach, perhaps?” Flug rolls his eyes, you can see it through his goggles, and you grit your teeth, _“please.”_

With a few languid strides to a nearby cabinet, Flug pulls out a plastic packet of nitrile gloves, similar to the ones he’s wearing. He tosses them at you.

“Cleaning supplies are in the closet next to your -snrk- office. Have fun.” You don’t stick around to give this smug asshole a piece of your mind because you’re too busy stressing about what to do with the fucking roadkill in your dad’s filing cabinet. Revenge can come later; for now, you have clean-up to do.

-

It’s actually not the first time you’ve disposed of a rotting animal. When you were a child, an aunt of yours, some lowly peon in analytics, killed herself by jumping from the roof of one of the family’s high-rises. By the time you cousins bothered to clean out her apartment, her pet terrier had starved. Being the youngest, you were of course bullied into disposing of the creature’s body. 

Grabbing the worm-ridden flesh and disintegrating pelt before you is nonetheless a deeply unpleasant experience. Thankfully it’s not very big and you are able to dispose of the mess in a mere two trips. You toss the last clumps of fur and flesh down the incinerator and head back to your now corpse-free office, holding your gloved hands out at a distance so you don’t get any gore on your clothes. The rage and indignation that overtook you minutes ago seemed to have done something for your headache, at least. It’s much less intense now. Maybe with luck you’ll get some work done tonight.

Rag in hand, you spray the stinking drawer with a heavy dose of bleach when some sort of rattling, hissing noise emanates suddenly from above. A nervous glance at the office ceiling grants you a sight of terror: a bilious green lizard with protruding eyes and twitching tongue, skittering out of the darkness down the wall towards you on human-like limbs. 

Aghast, you scream, jump backwards, and hear a high-pitched cackle. The lizard pounces at you but you somehow dodge it, narrowly avoiding a kick to your face. Staggering back further, your ass hits the lab floor and you stare nervously at whatever creature ambushed you. The lizard stands upright, takes a few steps towards you, and you realize you were mistaken.

“A- _hahaha!_ You should have seen the look on your face!” 

The bizarre lady beams at you with suspiciously sharp teeth. She seems unhinged, obvious from a glance. Lizard girl continues.

“I put that cute little raccoon in the drawer for that last office guy, since he seemed like he needed something to cuddle. But, it’s been at least a week and he never showed up for his surprise! Too bad for him!” She shrieks with laughter, clutching her sides. 

You awkwardly look around for someone to explain to you exactly who this weirdo is. Flug’s out of sight again, there aren’t even any infamous hatbots around to potentially assist you.

“Sorry, who are you?” You ask, and it comes out uncharacteristically timid. Lizard girl lunges forward, face close, breath hot, eyes crazy.

“Who, me? Oh, I’m Black Hat’s beloved girlfriend. Call me Demencia!”

This information you find very hard to process. Quite frankly, you’re not sure if you believe this girl’s claim. Demencia must have noticed your expression of doubt, because her face darkens maliciously.

“Since you’re new here, and might not be aware, you better not make any moves on my man or I promise no one will ever find your body.” She leans in to whisper at your ear, voice simultaneously giddy and threatening. You are supine on the cold floor and her knees press into the meat of your thighs, pinning them. Struggling up onto your elbows, you shake your head desperately and you stammer a response. 

“I have absolutely no intentions of making any, uh, moves on your... man. Don’t worry. Please get off.”

The pressure on your legs subsides and Demencia grabs your hand (she’s sweaty) and yanks you to your feet.

“Glad we’re on the same page! Now, what did you think of my little present?” 

It’s difficult to tell if she’s serious or not, but regardless of that, you don’t appreciate the question. You haven’t even peeled the contaminated gloves off your hands yet and you can still see some grubs on the floor below your desk. Your eyes narrow at the perpetrator.

“I think I just wasted 20 minutes cleaning up a disgusting mess. Why would you do that?” you hiss, temper flaring. Demencia’s tongue flicks out along her teeth, and she stares into your eyes with an unreadable expression.

“If you were really Black Hat’s girlfriend, you’d think you would have better things to do. Is there something wrong with you?” You add on for good measure.

Odds are extremely likely this person is not Black Hat’s girlfriend, or even remotely important to him. The two seem completely incompatible as people, besides the fact that they both kind of smell. You see no reason to treat her with respect.

Demencia responds with another peal of unsettling laughter and backs you up to a nearby metal beam. Despite her smile, her eyes are glinting and she looks a little pissed. She places her hands on either side of your face and your skin crawls as you feel fingernails stroke your temples. Maybe your evaluation was inaccurate. 

“Yeah, you could say there’s something wrong with me.” 

Without warning, she jerks your head by your ears to smack against the beam behind you. Stars appear in your vision along with a sudden bloom of pain, and you grab her wrists in an attempt to get her off. She kicks your ankles and then you’re back on the floor and Demencia’s on top. 

She rips at your face and you shriek in agony, vision blurring. Flailing your arms, you try to turn onto your stomach but the woman pins you down with a knee in your abdomen. You feel a bruise starting to form on your belly and the back of your head and scream some more.

Fighting was never your strong suit even though you’re decently fit, but no amount of martial arts training could have helped you in this moment. Demencia attacks in a way reminiscent of a wild chimpanzee. It’s terrifying and your attempts to get away do nothing. You might as well be fighting an octopus from inside a duvet cover. She’s everywhere at once and everywhere hurts.

You feel your right eyeball burst, field of vision partly disintegrating into a dark red splotch. You can’t tell if your eyes are closed or open. Demencia must have her thumb in your socket because you can feel something sharp and horrible wiggling around in there through the indescribable pain. She goes for your left. 

The floor is slick with what must be your blood, but you can’t tell because you can no longer see. You wail and kick your legs out, brain in survival mode. You don’t want to die. You’re aware of a vibration and an echoing emerging from somewhere behind you, a whirring noise and then, all at once, the weight of Demencia is suddenly gone from above you. It’s all you can do to prop yourself up on your hands, newly blinded and panicking. 

You can hear Demencia struggling, protesting.

“Let me go, nerd! I was just getting started and plus, that bitch deserved it!” Her voice is shrill with bloodlust and you register the sound of jangling chains and what must be a large machine close by. It smells like engine oil and blood, but the blood is probably from you. The ragged holes where your eyes used to be are oozing fluids down your swollen cheeks. Your face feels like someone took a blowtorch to it.

“Help me! Oh god, help me,” You plead to whoever’s nearby. Demencia’s shrieks and complaints drift from significantly further away, and you feel a gentle hand rest on top of your matted, sticky head.

Flug tilts your head upwards to get a look at the damage to your face. You hear him whistle long and low, surveying your wounds. You’d cry if you had eyes. It hurts to move. You keep trying to look around, not used to blindness, and with each twitch of your orbicularis muscles your optic nerves send a shock of pain directly through your head. You can’t stop shaking.

“I’m not going to tell Black Hat about this now, since you need medical attention if you want to have a fighting chance, and he would most likely have you put down. You’re lucky I’m here. Did no one warn you not to provoke Demencia?” The doctor tuts at you and you feel the faint prick of a syringe at your neck, though it’s barely noticeable after everything else you’ve endured.

"She's always sneaking in here. You’re lucky, considering she's been extra violent lately. Must be the new meds.” A numbness radiates from your neck downwards and your head lolls, strength gone.

“I’m putting you in an induced coma for a few hours until I finish what I’m doing, and then I’ll sort you out, okay?” His tone of voice is nicer than before, but the words are chilling. You don’t want to be in a coma. You want eyes. You want to live, you want to work. You reach towards him and grasp at starched fabric, hands weak and sticky with blood.

“Please don’t let me die.”

The doctor’s eyes glint with an expression of maniacal glee, but you’re unaware of this. Of all things, he didn’t expect you to beg. It's nice.

“I have plans for you, something I’ve been developing on the back burner. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. I am a doctor, after all.”

You slump to the floor, his last words to you going unheard as you black out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gore alert lol. Please let me know if you want more violence because I'm happy to oblige. Thanks for reading so far.


	4. Ersatz

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You're a cyborg now, have fun with that. Clock's ticking.

All things considered, Flug thinks the procedure went quite well.

The scientist takes a step back and surveys his handiwork. The stitches will probably leave some scars, but your body should accept the implants just fine. He won’t be able to determine the success until you’re awake to test them out, of course, but for now he’s pretty proud of his handiwork. Not bad for someone who’s most definitely not a surgeon. Really though, how different are nerves from electrical wiring? Engineering truly is the most interdisciplinary science of all, Flug muses.

You’re still unconscious, strapped to the operating chair with electrodes on your scalp and chest and hooked to several complicated machines. As part of the procedure your eyelids have been propped open with thin specula mounted onto a headpiece, prosthetic orbs staring blankly towards the ceiling. Cones of clearish jelly sit atop each socket, lubricating each surface and continuing their slow osmosis through the artificial cornea. Hopefully your tear ducts still work; if not, the recovery period will be tough.

The lights have been kept dim so as not to disrupt your brainwaves. These prosthetics are a little sensitive; the slightest detected change causes the irises to twist and constrict and darken. Looking into them now in the dim operating room is like staring at red-hot rings of metal in an oil slick. They glow, faintly pulsating, atop beetle-black sclera.

Flug notes that you’ve hardly stirred since he put you under; he may have been a little heavy-handed with the ketamine, but you don’t exactly seem to be suffering from it. Besides, he’s technically helping you and should therefore be able to inject you with whatever he sees fit. 

Not only that, he’s a little rusty when it comes to proper anaesthesia. Most who find themselves under his care aren’t afforded that luxury, but then again he doesn’t often bestow expensive implants on regular subjects.

It's been 20-odd hours since the hatbots dragged your limp, eyeless body into the operating room to await further ministration. Flug’s career of course takes precedence over helping entitled new paper-pushers who don’t know their place. He had several deadlines to meet by morning, and cramming an impromptu surgery into his agenda wasn’t on his to-do list. 

Also, given your evident talent for pissing off every person you’ve met in your short time here, Flug wouldn't be surprised if he finds himself scooping these expensive new eyes back out of your corpse in a few weeks. So he took his time getting around to you and once he did, it was a bit of a rush job. 

Despite all this, however, he had _fun_ with you. True, he’s horribly overworked and really can’t afford to do these sorts of things with his limited free time, and no, he’s not entirely convinced you deserve it, but any good scientist knows better than to pass up an opportunity when he sees one. He simply couldn’t resist.

Your situation would likely be quite different if Demencia had elected to maul a different body part. If Flug hadn’t been in convenient possession of either the technology or the materials necessary, he totally would have left you there to bleed, especially considering how rude you came off earlier. If this misstep doesn’t take your ego down a notch, you’re either stupid or megalomaniacal. In this industry, both are equally probable but only one will get you remotely far with Black Hat.

He had also considered the unique position you hold in the company as someone neither particularly powerful, yet not immediately expendable. Flug knows that if you die, he’ll be forced to pick up your slack. As if he doesn’t have his hands full already. 

Your death would undoubtedly translate into more piles of papers and all-nighters, and though the job itself would be a cinch for someone of his mathematical talent, he really despises those dry financial summaries and charts, the lack of artistry in corporate money matters. _No thanks._ You can slave away at that stuff, and leave the real innovation to him.

No, this little endeavor is something of an investment on Flug’s part. You should consider yourself very lucky and he doesn’t intend on letting you forget it.

With a sudden glance at your vitals and brainwave activity, Flug realises you’re starting to come round. He removes the harness securing your head and eyelids just as you mumble and lurch forward in your seat. 

Leaning forward in anticipation, he sees the irises spin and briefly dilate before focusing with a steady glow. An bio-engineering marvel.

“Welcome back,” Flug says, voice hushed. He’s savoring this.

-

You come up feeling like it’s the worst hangover of your life. Even the aftermath of your most regrettable college nights are incomparable to this. Besides the nausea and cotton-headedness, blinking feels terribly off, and you can’t quite place why. 

Your eyelids, badly bruised, are painful to move, but what's more alarming is it's like your eyeballs themselves are different somehow. You're aware of their place in your head as though they're foreign objects. They feel warm and slippery and weirdly hard, like boiled eggs. In your confusion you don’t immediately remember that prior to this they were violently gouged out, but then it all comes back and you scream and jerk your hands upward. They’re buckled down, making you all the more frantic.

Looking around, you see only dim grey machines and monitors beeping in tune to your vitals. Vicious images of Demencia spring to mind, pinning you down with carnivorous intent and popping your eyes with her bare hands. There’s no way you would have survived without Flug’s intervention. With a shudder, you turn toward the man at your side. 

Flug looks different than before. He seems pale and colorless and a bit more disheveled. Sleep deprivation is not a good look, you think to yourself. The subdued light glints off his silver goggles as he continues towards you and from a certain angle, you suppose he really does look the part of an evil scientist. This revelation does nothing for your anxiety. 

You recall how condescending he was to you before and your gut-reaction upon seeing his bagged head is to snarl something insulting, but you bite it back since you know he’s the reason you’re here, intact, instead of a pile of biowaste somewhere in the manor grounds. You settle for glaring instead, pursing your dry lips and expecting answers. 

At your sour expression, Flug folds his arms across his skinny chest, tilts his head back.

“You know, I was about to be nice and ask how you’re feeling, but obviously you’re well enough to make it clear you aren’t happy to see me.” 

He sounds a bit offended. As he presses a few buttons on a nearby monitor, a light clicks on overhead from a long-armed spotlight. The bright beam falls momentarily over your face and you cry out in pain, squeezing your eyes shut to no avail. It’s like staring straight into a laser pointer. Flug reaches over to push it out of the way. 

Your response is somewhat rude, but between the pulsing, needle-like pain in your eyes and the nausea from waning drugs, your self control isn’t great right now.

“Oh well, _excuse me,_ better unstrap me so I can jump for joy. What the fuck did you do to my eyes? When can I get back to my work? Tell me it hasn’t been three days already.” You ask the doctor crossly. He lets out a half-chuckle, the front of his bag crinkling. When he responds, he’s suspiciously chipper, if not a little derisive.

“Take it easy, mathlete. I’m guessing you have a good 40-some hours until Black Hat comes looking for you. I already took the liberty of pulling your predecessor’s laptop out of storage, just in case you expired during the procedure and I had to take over. You can sit tight right here and finish all the little excel sheets your heart desires.”

You bristle at Flug’s attitude. He continues. 

“I admire your commitment to your job, especially one so repetitive and boring. Even I’m not usually that enthusiastic to get back to work, and my duties are _infinitely_ more important than yours,” Flug concludes. 

You scoff and try to roll your eyes, but something within your head pulls them back tightly and painfully, thus limiting motility. You wince, fixing your eyes slowly back on the doctor. God, that hurt like hell.

“That’ll be the stitches within your eye sockets. Try not to wiggle them around too much in the next couple of weeks, you wouldn’t want the prosthetics to disconnect from your optic nerve. They are a pain to put back in, as I'm sure you can guess.”

His statement both disgusts and intrigues you. Prosthetics? So you are blind after all. You say nothing.

“Anyway, if you’re done being so demanding, care to answer a few questions for me?” Flug pulls up a nearby rolling chair and plops down, legs folded, clipboard in hand. His pants are so short you can see his grey socks and a patch of skinny white calf.

He produces a remote from his coat pocket and activates a small projector from a nearby computer. The screen emerges sideways until it’s level with your head, a couple feet away. It whirrs to life and gentle light plays across your face.

A few rows of progressively shrinking letters appear before you in friendly block font. You are reminded of the optometrist’s office.

“Read each row for me until you can’t make them out.” Flug urges.

You read each row down to the bottom. Flug scribbles something on his clipboard and gives you more tests in a similar vein.

You discover several things about your new eyes. One, your vision is quite good. In fact, it's much better than before. You read every single letter all the way to the bottom, in every slide, barely pausing. Easy. 

Flug furiously takes notes and is making these interested hems and haws from his seat. He seems excited, and to be honest, so are you. You don’t know if it's just adrenaline or if you really did recover that fast but your eyes are fantastic and barring the soreness of your face, you’re starting to feel pretty good about them. 

The second thing you realize, after several fruitless Ishihara tests, is that you’re completely colorblind. Flug explains that the nanotubes that make up your new retinas aren’t capable of seeing color, but you struggle to believe him. You feel like you still see what colors things are, it’s just that everything in the lab is grey. Even Flug’s paper bag seems brown until you look right at it, then the color seems to drain. You look down at your hands. They seem like your skin tone until you stare at them, then they’re pallid. Very frustrating.

“It’s natural for your brain to try to fill in color now that you’re unable to process it for yourself, but there plainly isn’t any way for the implants to receive color wavelengths. The colors you think you see now are mere products of previous knowledge and approximation. Here, let me prove it to you. 5.0.5? Come here, my boy.”

Out of the shadows you hear a snuffling sound and heavy footsteps. An upright and enormous bear(?) appears before you and Flug. You gasp in surprise but not exactly fear. It’s hard to be frightened by something with a flower on its head. You look at the tender-eyed behemoth. It’s quite cute, twitching its shiny nose as it hovers closely behind the doctor.

“This is 5.0.5, my darling experiment. He’s very well-mannered. Tell me, what color is he?”

You stare at the thing. He stares back with an uncomplicated look on his fuzzy face.

“Um. Brown,” you declare, not quite confidently.

“Wrong!” Flug hoots, a little loud. He sheepishly clears his throat and moves to the side. 5.0.5 ventures a little closer to you, ears bobbling on either side of his little flower. He is huge but not intimidating in the least, and you can’t help but smile at his simple, rounded features. He’s like a child’s mascot you’d see on TV. You reach out to stroke his soft paw and he almost purrs in response. 

You don’t believe Flug when he tells you 5.0.5 is blue because it’s ridiculous, but you begrudgingly accept your newfound deficit. It’s a bit sad, but you’d rather see in greys than not see at all. After all, it’s not like you’re trying to be a jet pilot or anything. It’s a small price to pay.

Flug murmurs something to 5.0.5 and pats him affectionately. The bear-thing lumbers off, slamming a faraway door. Flug seems to be lost in thought for a moment, then moves to shut down the various machines, peeling off electrodes from your skin while he’s at it. You lean into his gloved touch for a very brief moment, just to see how he reacts, and you hear an audible gulp from behind the bag. Interesting.

You decide to ask the doctor how he managed to do such a complicated procedure in as short a time as he claims, but he’s evasive with his answers and keeps pretending to be busy checking your EEG records or something.

He tells you not to exert yourself too much physically and to stay in the lab area until you’re finished recovering. You ask how long that’ll take. Flug says a week. You ask if you’re really okay enough to start work now, and he responds with a noncommittal “you tell me”.

So much for bedside manner. Evidently, the resident scientist is done being sociable because he’s blatantly avoiding conversation, much to your chagrin. You can see from here that the back of his lab coat is soaked with sweat.

When he begins removing the straps from your wrists and ankles, you tilt your head surreptitiously to get a look under the bag. 

You see a pale neck with a protruding Adam's apple, but only shadows above that. Flug notices you staring and quickly repositions himself away from you with a flustered glare, ripping the final buckle from your shin. He turns back to the desk alongside the operating chair, refusing to meet your eye. 

“Don’t be nosy. I sent 5.0.5 for your laptop, the sooner you get started the better. I hope for both our sakes you’re a fast worker,” Flug mutters. He's right, you've got less than two days to finish and that's not counting rest breaks. You find it hard to believe he gave you usable robot eyes in the span of a single day, but you'll bug him later about it.

You yawn and do some stretches, mentally prepping yourself to get to work. Though you’re still technically recovering from surgery, you feel energized and strangely hyper, like there’s some sort of tingling electric sensation within your brain and spine. There’s a faint ringing in your ears, not unpleasant, just… there. 

Your whole body is massively sore and the headache you’ve been wrestling with since you got here is slowly making its way back into your forehead. You concede that you are indeed very lucky to be alive. 

“Hey, Flug.” Flug says nothing.

“Doctor Flug.” 

He turns around wordlessly to face you. What a dick. 

You place your hands together gratefully and give him a practiced, beatific smile, the one you know looks cute.

“Thanks a lot for the eyes. I really owe you one, I guess.” You say, as sweet as you can manage. Flug visibly squirms in his shoes.

The eyes are a godsend, sure, but their miraculous residence in your head means the doctor’s got some serious ulterior motives for fixing you up like this. Prosthetic eyes are straight out of science fiction for the rest of the world, you know he’s not just handing them out like gumballs to any eyeless fuck he happens upon. Whatever his deal is, you better play your cards right.

The doctor taps his shoe on the scuffed linoleum and cracks his knuckles. He clears his throat self-consciously, still not meeting your new eyes. You stare at him regardless.

“You really are quite lucky, you know. I’m sure I’ll find some way for you to pay me back,” he responds, his hesitant, nasally voice not quite giving this decidedly creepy statement the oomph it needed. 

You get the message and decide to indulge him, for now. You give him another charming smile, reveling in his discomfort. As soon as 5.0.5 busts in to deliver your laptop, Flug practically runs for the door. 

You stare after him with your glowing eyes as 5.0.5 lingers obliviously by your side. Flug thinks you’re stupid, but he can't even imagine the kinds of manipulative powerplays you’ve been privy to, simply through being raised under the thumb of corporate villains like your father. If he only knew the sorts of nasty, slimy, reprehensible backstabbing only corporate bankers are capable of, it'd make his skin crawl. You suppress a laugh. Go ahead, let him underestimate you.

With a final calculating thought, you smirk to yourself and get to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's taking me so long for me to get to actual plot. Just bear with me, folks. If you've made it this far, give yourself a gold star. If you're here for gore, sorry to disappoint and I'll try to make up for the relative cuteness in this chapter next time. Thanks again for reading.


	5. Enervate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Black Hat's not super impressed with your work. You discover that you're not nearly as important as you were led to believe.

Depending on who they ask, any curious individual might receive several contradicting survival strategies (of dubious efficacy) for what to do when you’re on the receiving end of Black Hat’s wrath.

  1. Duck and cover. Vital organs, specifically.
  2. Pander to his ego.
  3. Make him a deal he can’t refuse.



Unfortunately for you, by the next time you’re interdimensionally pretzeled into Black Hat’s garish office, you haven’t heard any of these.

The pain from getting torn through spacetime duodenum-first has barely subsided before your face is immediately and harshly pressed down on by one of Black Hat’s rigid oxfords.

Being in such close proximity to Black Hat yet again kicks off another monster headache, of which you never seem to fully recover from. You still haven’t figured out if that’s on purpose, or if it’s just an unfortunate demonic side-effect. Either way, it’s supremely annoying.

Cheek squishing painfully into the floor, you manage to lift your hands palms-upward in a pacifying gesture, as if it would mean anything to someone like your boss. 

You hear the sound of flipping paper from above you. Black Hat is rifling through the swath of reports you finished not a minute ago. His eye dances back and forth, back and forth, skimming each page with an expression of undisguised hostility. 

Looking up at the rapidly shuffling pages, you’re eerily certain you never printed them out, or even emailed them. No one at the company gave you any guidance on best practices to hand in finished documents to Black Hat, after all. 

You have no idea how he got them so fast. Cloud-based computing? Is there an evil Cloud?

You suppose Black Hat must also possess the ability to print files remotely via some sort of arcane computer magic. That must be awfully convenient, you think to yourself. You wonder if that’s something you could learn.

Shoe still planted firmly on your face, Black Hat speaks and you’re shaken from your thoughts. The deadline is up. 

“Do you have any idea what time it is, you _cockroach_?” 

Come to think of it, yes. You do know what time it is. You have, in fact, been obsessively keeping track of time since you received your work laptop, scared shitless that Flug had been too generous with his estimate of how many hours you had left until your work was due. 

After a brief evaluation of everything you needed to complete, your brain went into overdrive in order to finish everything in less than half the time you’d originally been given. You’ve never worked so fast and so hard in your entire career, and for what?

 _Shit work._ That’s right, those precious reports your father had been tasked with? They were of the sort the lowest-ranked, most peabrained analyst at any pathetic bank could fulfil. Why would Black Hat ever need you for something like this? 

Obvious insult to your intelligence aside, the pages and pages of patent documents and sales projections and investment strategies for Shi-Bo Inc. were a far cry from the pizazz that you thought you’d be included in. 

This job is your lifelong goal. You were led to believe you’d be a financial executive, a higher-up able to utilize your practiced negotiation strategies to help Black Hat win deals and acquire lifelong customers, not sit in a stinking closet surrounded by dusty files, staring cross-eyed at spreadsheets.

What you had been tasked with was the complete and utter opposite of the skills you’ve obsessively honed during your rise to the supposed “top”. No, this was work suiting those at rock bottom.

Bitter thoughts buffered you from under the surface as you worked, below the rapid-fire typing and calculations. 

Had _this_ been the sort of work your father was relegated to the whole time he’d held this title? What about those who came before him? Had your family’s place in the pecking order been a sham this whole time? These questions boggled your mind and put you in a foul mood.

All in all, you gave yourself a mere 35 hours to speed your way through all the typing and formatting and organizing and graphing and final drafting and analysing and, most bewildering of all, patent-jargon. 

And since you’re being honest, that last one isn’t even something you have much experience with since you don’t have any ties to R&D. But why would you? You’re a banker. You talk money and look powerful and intimidate lesser people and occasionally deign to do paperwork only when it's important enough.

You worked your ass off, barely a sip of coffee or bite of toast to tide you over for fear you’d waste precious time pissing instead of proofing. And now, you’re finally, mercifully, done.

You know what time it is.

“Time for my break.” You announce.

You know before the words leave your mouth that you are so completely fucked.

The force of Black Hat’s kick would have easily splattered the contents of your skull like a rotten pumpkin had you not rolled away in the nick of time. 

His foot passes a hair’s distance away from your nose and you feel deadly force in the charged air. It was a very close call. You’re already sweating buckets.

Black Hat lets loose a wild, inhuman roar that quakes the office walls, sending ugly ornaments and ornate books on shelves toppling down to the floor. 

Glass breaks all around. You scramble back against the wood-paneled wall, hands up defensively.

The sheath of reports is hurled at you from across the room, and the pages shower your arms and shins with razor-thin cuts. You hiss in pain, shielding your face and precious eyes. Before you, your boss transforms.

Black Hat’s form bubbles and pulsates, his skin rippling with hellfire. Tentacles lined with wicked suckers shoot in your direction and there’s nowhere to run. He grabs you, sends you flying.

You are soon dangling upside-down in the center of what feels like a raging cyclone. You see the gnashing of horrible teeth ringing a many-tongued maw, the heaving tentacles at your ankles threatening bisection as Black Hat loses his shit at you from below. 

Looking at the office from this dizzying vantage point, you note that Black Hat’s entire bottom half is submerged within a tarry black sludge, swirling and rising outward in waves bequeathing tentacles and clawed hands and the occasional giant eyeball.

“How _DARE_ you ask for a break when you’ve delivered the _SHODDIEST_ of excuses for work at the _VERY LAST MINUTE,"_ Black Hat screams at you. 

His voice scrapes at your eardrums. You can hear the fractured, tortured voices of trapped souls echoing his words in legion from within your brain. It tickles, and not in a good way. 

You desperately turn to look upon the being you serve, while averting your eyes as best you can from his demonic glare. Rivulets of blood drop from the cuts on your arms and legs and are lapped up by the tentacles holding you tight.

“Would you like an explanation or an excuse, Lord Black Hat?” You manage to wheeze from behind the tentacle suckling at your throat. 

You really hope your new eyeballs don’t pop out from the pressure building in your skull. Grimly, you reflect that you never thought to ask Flug for spare goggles, but it’s definitely too late to worry about that now. 

These could be your last moments, you suppose eyesight won’t make much of a difference at this point.

Mercifully, the tentacle loosens ever so slightly as Black Hat considers. He is clearly still raging at you, but it’s no longer a senseless rage. 

You feel yourself start to swing from side to side, tentacles rocking back and forth as Black Hat ponders whether or not to just kill you outright or hear what you have to say. You have an excellent view of the office in grayscale from up there, not that you’re enjoying yourself.

Without warning, the tentacles drop you. As you fall, screaming, the giant horrible mouth from earlier turns inside out with a graphic squelch. It morphs into an enormous, pitcher plant-like cocoon, tightly encapsulating you like an unlucky bug. You tread desperately in the dark fluid, cuts burning as if in saltwater. 

Your feet can’t touch the bottom and you hear a soft sizzling sound like frying meat. Images of flesh dissolving from bones pass through your brain and you scream again. A trademark evil chuckle emanates from beyond.

You struggle against the tar-like substance within the walls of Black Hat’s illusion. His once-again humanoid appearance is visible against the light from outside, standing before you. Your skin is extremely itchy. You guess you don’t have long to defend yourself before you truly start to die, so you make it succinct.

“Demencia attacked me before I could start, she ripped out my eyes so I was blind for a day and a half!” You splutter, spitting black liquid away from your mouth. It tastes unmentionably foul.

Mysterious solid lumps and chunks brush against your feet below the surface and you try not to think about them too much. Thankfully your eyes seem unharmed, for now.

“What do you mean, you _were_ blind?” Black Hat scoffs. The churning black acid recedes somewhat, and you finally feel a solid surface beneath you. Your legs still burn badly.

You don’t know if you should tell him about Flug’s role in your recovery or not. It’s unlikely he got the go-ahead from Black Hat, and you don’t want to jeopardize what little the doctor thinks of you by implicating him in your fuck-up.

“Um. I got better?”

The spotted, flesh-like walls encasing you curl outwards and disappear with a slurp, the black liquid spiraling away like a draining sink through some invisible wormhole. You are left standing damp and shivering in Black Hat’s office once more.

Your boss looms over your head, scrutinizing your bruised face. His neck extends forward, presumably to get a closer look. You stand like a statue, holding your breath due to both fear and Black Hat’s disagreeable odor.

“What are those.” He jabs a skinny, gloved finger towards the middle of your face at your obviously inhuman eyes.

You hack up some blackish saliva, left over from your imprisonment, and tactfully ignore his question in favor of continuing your excuse - rather, explanation.

“Since I didn’t get anything started until halfway through Day 2, tech-nic-ally I completed everything you asked of me in only, um, half the time you were generous enough to endow,” you do your best to keep your voice from quivering under Black Hat’s rotten glare. 

He’s quiet. His teeth are clenched, brow furrowed as he evaluates what you said.

Personally, you’d be a little impressed if you were him, but you’re not going to pretend you know what's going on in Black Hat’s brain. It’s probably the stuff of nightmares.

With a flourish of his wrist, the papers strewn about his office fling themselves up and coalesce once more into his open hand. He rifles through them, then hands them to you. The pages are covered in a mess of red pen, pointing out your negligible errors.

“Though it is complete, your reports leave much to be desired. Workplace accidents are no excuse and are in no way my responsibility.” 

You nod, sending droplets of black slime from your hair. 

“I absolutely agree, it was my own fault. If I hadn’t let myself be so foolishly attacked I could have done a much better job. Your evaluation of my work's quality is spot-on indeed.” 

Black Hat ignores your attempt to butter him up. 

“Since you didn’t utilize the full deadline, I will grant you an extension of no more than 36 hours to revise these reports and bring them to an acceptable standard. Upon completion we will have another meeting to discuss whether I should terminate your contract or keep you on the team. Keep in mind... termination includes your entire family, not just you!”

You can hardly believe what you’ve just heard. Black Hat cackles and adopts a psychotic expression once more, single eye bright with homicidal glee. 

The thought of your backstabbing, hateful family getting carted off to hell doesn’t affect you much. Good riddance, honestly. Still, you are very aware that getting an extension from Black Hat is about as rare as getting praise from your dad. It’ll likely be the sole privilege he’ll ever offer you, provided you can deliver what he’s asking for. You fucked up your job and somehow managed to come out intact. 

Relieved beyond belief, you drop to your knees and grovel like your life depends on it, very aware of the privilege to still be alive.

“Thank you, Lord Black Hat! You have my eternal gratitude! I’m a lowly worm, and you are truly the most evil!” You proclaim, sung praises cut short by a hand on your jaw, tilting your face upward. 

Black Hat gazes into your eyes, dangerously close. You wince and stay frozen in place, not sure of exactly what’s happening. 

Staring back feels like you're locking eyes with a tiger, wound back on its haunches and ready to pounce. A burst of adrenaline courses through your system. You feel your face grow red. 

“S-Sir? What is it? Sir?” You stammer. His stare makes you feel naked. Is he going to kiss you?

The sudden thought makes your stomach flip. No way, Black Hat would never. Or would he...

Sweat courses down your neck. Anyway, you don’t know if you’d even survive a romantic tryst with him, you’d be lying if you said you’ve never entertained the thought but that’s just it, the thoughts were merely entertainment, no one can hold that against you, it's understandable given your lifestyle that you have a thing for evil–

“Did Flug give you these?” Black Hat’s finger taps at your right eyeball and you turn your head away so his fingertip jabs your cheekbone instead. You nod, wincing at what’s undoubtedly to come. You hope Black Hat wasn’t reading your thoughts just now.

“You know, it’s funny,” Black Hat rises from his position before you to pace a few steps. His voice is deceptively calm.

“I really don’t remember giving Flug the go-ahead to do any personal experiments while he’s supposed to be working on other things. How long do you claim it took for you to, how did you put it, get better?”

You gulp.

“...A day?”

“A day and a half,” Black Hat corrects you, smooth as a knife. You purse your lips and remain quiet.

“A whole day, then another half. The doctor is a very busy man, as I’m sure you’ve figured out,” Black Hat continues. 

You would almost prefer your boss to be pants-shittingly outraged, over whatever he’s doing now. He looks placid but you know there’s something roiling behind his visage, you can feel it in the air. It's charged with the same dark energy you felt when he attacked you earlier. You shiver.

“I suppose he’s due for another reminder about managing his time wisely.” With that, Black Hat exits via portal by lifting his arm up Dracula-style to fold reality, presumably going to torture a certain scientist. And just like that, you're alone again. 

You tiptoe out of Black Hat's office, avoiding wayward puddles of dark goop, and try to be as quiet as possible for fear you'll attract unwanted attention. You need to find your way back to the lab somehow, but you still don't know your way around the compound. Even if you did make it back, Flug's probably busy getting flayed alive and his screams would definitely impede your productivity.

Despite your attempts to be sneaky, the heavy office door slams shut and the sound echoes throughout the hall. A flash of wild hair appears in your periphery, and before you can whip your head around, you are once again pinned to a wall by the very person you were terrified of seeing again, the girl who'd be plaguing your nightmares if you'd had any time to sleep.

"Hello again. Fancy meeting you here, NOT. What were you up to in hubby's office, hmm?" Demencia asks, sickly sweet.

You emerge intact from the frying pan, only to plunge straight into the proverbial fire. Lucky you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like this at all, please consider leaving some feedback because it will motivate me, as well as make my whole day. I would love to hear your thoughts, desires, speculations, literally anything. Tell me what you need! I'll do my best to deliver.


	6. Etiquette

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Demencia makes a smart choice, and you demand answers from Flug. Something must be done about your eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone, thanks for sticking with me so far. This chapter took me a while. I had to rewrite it a few times, but I think we're getting closer to the good stuff.

Based on pretty much every interaction you’ve had so far with the inhabitants of Black Hat’s headquarters, you’re convinced no one in this godforsaken mansion has any concept of personal space.

Demencia’s face hovers mere inches away, mismatched eyes studying you in all your bedraggled, sweaty splendor. From what you can surmise from the scattered tools and scrap around you both, she appears to have been laying some sort of elaborate booby trap down the hall involving tripwires, roofing nails, and several cartons of eggs.

For who? Probably the poor idiot she’s got in a chokehold.

You struggle uselessly. Demencia’s forearm pushes into the soft meat of your already bruised neck, and you notice that despite both of you being of similar height, she’s leaner and stronger. Her toned limbs attest to her obvious role as muscle of the place, when she’s not tearing innocent eyeballs out of people’s faces or stuffing roadkill into their filing cabinets.

Demencia snarls something about you doing the quote “walk of shame” out of Black Hat’s office. Ah, if only things were that simple. You really don’t think she’ll buy whatever you tell her, truth or otherwise. It seems she’s already decided exactly what you and Black Hat were up to; she must see you as competition of some sort. No wonder she’s so belligerent.

Moreover, you detect a wounded tone in your captor’s accusation. Her feelings are hurt before she even knows what’s going on. A classic sign of weakness in the less-intelligent, not that you’ll point that out. 

This is so, so tiring. All this overwhelming strife and violence is unsurprisingly taking a toll on your mental state. You’ve never felt so nauseated in your life. To add insult to actual injury, your head is still throbbing from the Black Hat-induced migraine coupled with the head-trauma bonanza you’ve been subjected to in just the last few days. 

Even without Demencia threatening to trounce you a second time, your anxiety levels are at an all time high, and there’s an additional strange sensation between your ears that doesn’t feel right. Your eyes are starting to blur and refocus on their own, like an uncalibrated camera lens.

The exhaustion you’re struggling with must be obvious at a glance, since you’re damp with sweat and slime and the cuts you sustained during Black Hat’s supervision are still bleeding freely. If Demencia fights you now, you won’t stand a snowball’s chance and she knows it. 

Better think fast. De-escalate.

“Oh, Demencia! Just the girl I wanted to see!” 

You exclaim rather spittily right in her face, summoning what you hope is a convincing smile. Immediately you can tell she’s a little thrown off, but her grip on your throat stays tight. Her eyes are still hardened but she quirks her eyebrow in confusion. 

Time to suppress any pride you have left. You place a gentle hand over the elbow threatening your trachea and try not to think about what that arm did to you last time.

“Just wanted to say I’m so sorry for offending you earlier. Obviously I had no idea who you were, and Black Hat just put me through the wringer for not knowing my place. It sucked, he totally hates me. In fact, I was just heading out to find you so I could properly apologize.” 

Your tone is unnaturally high and strung-out, probably from the stress and increasing lack of oxygen.

Demencia bares her fangs, tongue flicking the sharp tips. She doesn’t seem convinced at all.

With sudden force, she pushes downward on your helpless neck and you slide down the wall until you hit the floor with a thud. Demencia remains overhead, never breaking eye contact. 

Your heart feels like it’s going to give out, it’s palpitating like a jellyfish. The dizzying lights in the hall seem especially blinding now, turning shadows into high-contrast voids and clouding out the corners of your vision. 

“Do you think I’m stupid?” Demencia asks bluntly, not acknowledging your completely sincere apology.

Cue your nervous, pathetic laughter. 

“Omigod, no! The opposite! Why would you say that, the thought has never crossed my mind-” 

You don’t get to finish your sentence because Demencia flings you sideways with a jerk of her arm, giving you whiplash in the process. Okay, she’s escalating. 

You catch yourself on your hands, sputtering shaky breaths, and thoroughly start to panic.

“I don’t need an apology from you, I just want to know what you’re doing creeping around like you’ve got something to hide. So far you haven’t given much of an answer. Seems pretty suspicious to me!” Demencia proclaims, grinning without an ounce of kindness.

The annoying buzzing noise in the background, the one you’ve been trying to ignore since you woke up in the lab, has increased exponentially and is now deafening. It’s useless to try to focus on anything else, since your brain feels like it's in a microwave. You helplessly grip the base of your neck with both hands and curl your toes in pain. 

There’s nowhere to run, nothing to grab except your skull. Demencia’s shadow falls overhead and her wicked silhouette shines huge and blurry. She’s toying with you. Your head thrums like a superheated coil with every heartbeat, like you can feel blood steaming from inside. An unexplainable fever radiates from within your skull. All you do is gasp and whine and wait for something of yours to give out, be it heart or head.

Demencia reaches you in two strides. Her shoe comes down hard on your ankle, sending screaming agony through the tender joint, though it’s nothing compared to the simultaneous, searing bolt of pain behind your eyeballs. Jaw clenched tight, you point your face upward and catch a glimpse of Demencia, wide-eyed. Her expression falters at you, and she takes a big step back.

“Get away!” You shriek, and suddenly there’s lightning.

Everything goes nuclear white for a few petrifying seconds and when your vision finally fades in, it's upside-down and in reverse contrast until you blink a few times, then it rights itself. You flap your hands at your sizzling eyelids, trying desperately to cool them down. It burns.

The hotness behind your eyes is still pretty intense, but you no longer feel any heat in your face besides your poor eyelids. You touch them gently, only to find your eyelashes are completely gone. The noisy thrum within your head is gone, now a stifling, silent vacancy.

Demencia is backed against the opposite wall, arms shielding her head. She looks around, dazed, and you follow her line of sight to a smallish, charred hole in the ceiling between you. It smells of faint metallic fumes. Bits of blackened debris drift to the floor. Both of you stare at the hole for a moment, processing.

From the floor above, the sound of an approaching hatbot breaks the silence. There’s a squeaky rattle, then the squeal of scraping metal as you both witness a hatbot’s small, single-axle wheel plunge raucously through the melted hole. The hatbot whines and beeps piteously, struggling to free itself to no avail.

Demencia slowly begins to laugh, at first high-pitched and nervous, then with bright protracted guffaws, and then you get started and just can’t stop. 

It’s the sleep deprivation; it’s the undeserved and grievous bodily harm, it's the unexpected work extension, it’s the profound lack of context, it’s the twisted ankle, it’s the fact that the only fucking thing you’ve eaten since the funeral was a packet of softened, sat-upon jelly beans you found on a chair in the lab’s back room. You howl with frantic laughter until your kidneys threaten mutiny. What the fuck.

“So when were you gonna tell me about your awesome new _laser destructo-eyes?!_ ” Demencia interjects through peals of giddy laughter. No words come out as you gasp for air. You wave a limp, dismissive hand in her direction. 

Demencia crawls her way to your side of the hallway and plops herself down in front of you, still giggling. She grabs your cheeks with a rough hand and turns your head side to side, examining you. You’re too weak to put up much of a fight.

“You can still see, right?” She asks. You nod, trying to compose yourself. She makes an approving noise and continues to prod your face. With every tap of her finger on your cheekbone your vision fuzzes briefly into static before righting itself. Why she’s suddenly acting so friendly, you have no idea. It's jarring. The violent temper she exposed just a few minutes ago has entirely dissipated, but you’re not certain you can trust her fully. She’s just too volatile, and those types stress you out. 

The more you think about it, the capriciousness of her attitude offends you more than if she actually despised you like you thought she did. You lost your eyes in what amounted to a mood-swing. How revolting.

Demencia extends a hand, which you reluctantly accept, and pulls you to your feet. Her interest in your eyes seems, at least for now, to prevail over her need to pick a fight with you.

“Do you have _any_ idea how long I’ve wanted a pair of robot eyes? I can’t believe it! You almost melted my face off. That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!” She continues to gush about your eyes. The hatbot above you is still helplessly revving its wheel, getting nowhere.

The unexpected fit of laughter has subsided, but you don’t yet know how to respond, or even what to think. This whole time you thought you needed to be careful with your prosthetics because they were a delicate piece of technology, not because they’re a safety hazard. It’s a lot to come to terms with.

Why hadn’t that bastard Flug told you any of this before? The mere thought of him keeping this a secret infuriates you. There is literally no merit in withholding knowledge of the eyeball-laser feature from the person wielding them. It’s illogical and dangerous, not to mention highly disrespectful. You’ll definitely have a few choice words for him when you next meet. 

Then there’s the matter of property damage. That’ll be a bitch of a bill to foot.

“Are we, uh, going to get in trouble for burning a hole through the ceiling?” You ask Demencia hesitantly, glancing up.

“You mean, are you going to get in trouble. Unfortunately, I can’t take credit for your fine work,” Demencia snickers, sidling too close for comfort. She gives you a playful punch in the shoulder that sends you stumbling. You hold yourself back from reminding her that she technically is the reason why you burned a hole in the ceiling.

“And nah, this shit happens all the time. A bot will fix it eventually.” Demencia seems unconcerned.

You look skeptically back at the still-struggling hatbot trapped in the hole. It doesn’t look like it’s fixing much, but you don’t argue. Demencia whips a chunk of drywall at it for absolutely no reason, hitting the metallic body with a hollow clunk. It emits a reproachful beep, to your companion’s amusement. She hunts the floor for more debris, oblivious to you.

Demencia’s lifestyle is baffling to observe. Most of her decisions seem to be made with little to no foresight or regard for consequence. She immediately comes off as deranged to everyone she meets, thereby setting people’s expectations low, so she can… what? Impress them later? Neglect opportunities for self-improvement? You give up trying to analyse her. The sooner you accept her impulsivity, the less chance you’ll have of accidentally pissing her off again.

Must be liberating, you think glumly, doing whatever you like without someone breathing down the back of your neck all the time. You wonder if Black Hat even bothers trying to rein her in, or if there’s a method to her madness that only he in his all-seeing way can conceive. Meanwhile, you always have everything mapped out, yet somehow skirt the precipice of failure with every new task. 

Maybe that’s what’s been holding you back.

You shake away the depressing reflection, in favor of a decision. It’s neither good nor bad, merely the kind only an abject workaholic is capable of reaching.

No more fucking around in hallways with lizard people. You have a job to do and you’ve wasted far too much of Black Hat’s generous extension already. No matter how tired you are, no matter how weird your robot eyes might be, you need to start getting shit done stat. And obviously you don’t see yourself getting far as long as Demencia’s around, which means you’ll need to ditch her somehow.

There is also the concerning matter of unanticipated laserbeams; surely you’ll demand answers out of Flug at some point. That's definitely another priority, but you haven’t even figured out how to navigate this labyrinth of a headquarters yet.

You consider what the odds would be that Demencia would give you real directions, or if she’d just trick you into a bottomless pit for personal amusement.

Your stomach gurgles in betrayal before you can formulate any real plan. Demencia whips her head around at the sudden sound, then points at you with a black-tipped finger, exaggerating disgust.

“Ahaha. Oh my god, was that you? You haven’t even asked where the kitchen is? You’re hopeless,” she teases.

By now you are past humiliation. Hunger does that to a person, and you are so, so hungry. Just the adjacent mention of food makes you salivate and realise how faint you feel. You suppose you can allow yourself a half hour to get your blood sugar up, it’ll make work a little easier to bear.

“...If you lead the way, I swear to fuck I’ll make you the best goddamn omelette you’ve ever had in your life, Demencia.”

-

It turns out Black Hat’s manor is less confusing than you initially thought. The only reason you were led to believe it was so, according to Demencia, was that Black Hat likes to show off by deliberately leading newcomers down a winding, incomprehensible path. Go figure. 

You don’t know what you expected but the kitchen seems pretty normal, if somewhat sparse. The carton of eggs was retrieved from Demencia’s half-done booby trap, as you managed to convince her of a better use. Omelettes are your one culinary triumph. You almost never cooked for yourself growing up; a revolving door of nannies and housekeepers made sure of that. And of course once you started working, you barely had any time to learn your way around a kitchen. 

The omelettes are glorious, made more so the fact of them being your first decent meal in several days. Demencia devours hers like some sort of prehistoric beast and it takes all your willpower to not eat with the same disgusting abandon. Of course, you would love to shove handfuls of egg into your face with your bare hands, but now is not the time to succumb to base desires. 

You cook and eat fast anyway, mindful of the time. Plus, food looks pretty gross in black and white.

Fortunately it seems the way to Demencia’s heart is through her stomach, since she has declared a tenuous truce with you after her free meal. Good to know some issues in this house can be resolved simply, and with you no longer on her shit list (for now) that’s one less thing to worry about. She keeps harping on about your laser eyes; you tell her you intend to improve your aim in case she changes her mind. She only cackles at you, picking her teeth. 

It isn’t until much later that you recognize your first meal with the girl who tried to maim you twice was also the first time you’ve ever cooked for another. For now, you simply muse on how much stress a yummy little meal can sweep away.

You wipe butter from the corners of your mouth and sigh, satiated and much more alert than before. Even the repetitive workload to come seems more manageable on a full stomach. With your mood considerably lifted, you clear away the dishes and bound to the door, ready to get started on your revisions. 

Just as you near the threshold, the door swings open and in walks the man of the hour, the one you have a few choice words for. The mere sight of Flug’s crumpled paper bag and limp-noodle posture send you spiraling into resentment once more.

“Yyyou mother _fucker_.” Those are the choice words that spring to mind.

Flug’s startled by your sudden appearance, but still shoots a rotten glance at you as he shuffles past. He gives you a wide berth, making a beeline for the coffeemaker. His movements are stiff and slow, like he’s in quite a bit of pain.

“How rude. I could say the same to you, snitch,” he retorts. You don’t deny his words, but they do cause a shallow pang of guilt. Flug’s clearly worse off in terms of physical injuries. Black Hat must have really gone in on his punishment. There’s a visible bloody spot seeping through Flug’s paper bag, and his goggles are cracked and askew. One shoe is untied. You scoff defensively to hide your discomfort and watch the doctor limp to the kitchen counter. 

Demencia deliberately scrapes the legs of her chair back against the floor, harsh noise disturbing the quiet. She taunts the doctor cheerfully.

“Looks like Fluggy got thrashed by Black Hat once again! What was it this time, twerp? Switch up the buttons on your stupidity ray?” 

For shame, Demencia. You could think of way better insults than that. 

Flug eyes her with mild annoyance before turning his back to pour himself a generous mug of lukewarm black coffee. They must do this often.

“Demencia. Seeing your face just reminded me that I need to order more child locks.” 

The doctor’s voice is monotone and hoarse, likely from screaming. He seems unfazed by Demencia’s disruptions and sips his coffee through a straw. You’re disappointed by that for some reason.

Well, it’s clearly time to go. You feel like you’ve overstayed what little welcome you had. A last glance at Demencia, who’s still rhythmically scooting her chair back and forth, then you wordlessly drift from the kitchen. Flug clearly isn’t in the mood to get the third degree from you, Demencia doesn’t seem like she’s got anything better to do than annoy the doctor, and your self-allotted mealtime is over anyway. 

Socializing is not on your list of priorities, you have enough lost time to make up for without trying to fit in with these two. You head for the laboratory. The long, darkened hallway is blissfully quiet, free of hatbots or elusive supernatural bosses.

The eye scanner device securing the lab piques your interest as you reach the door. You self-consciously align your face to the black screen, merely out of curiosity but, maybe, if there’s even the slightest chance, alas. Nothing happens. No eye detected. According to the little infrared sensor, you might as well be a ghost. You repeat. Again, nothing. 

Of course you can’t just enter your own goddamn workspace, that would be too easy. The utter powerlessness and lack of clearance you’ve been granted in this place is un-fucking-believable. 

Groaning, you knock your forehead against the display a few times.

“That’s not how you use a retina scan,” Flug offers wryly from somewhere behind you. Just who you need right now. You lift your head at the sound of his voice and grant him a look of exaggerated fake astonishment.

“Oh really? I had no idea. Thank goodness you came along, otherwise I would just be doing this all day.”

Flug produces a slim plastic card on a lanyard from his back pocket and swings it at you. 

“This might be useful.”

You examine the keycard. Above the Black Hat logo and your last name, there’s a grainy and unflattering image of your unconscious, bloody face, sans eyes. You grimace.

“So you just forgot to give this to me earlier, huh? Also, why were you taking pictures of me while I was blacked out? That’s super creepy.” Flug squints spitefully at you, posture defensive. Must have hit a nerve.

“I believe the words you’re looking for are ‘thank you for the keycard, Doctor, I’m ever so grateful for everything you do for me, sorry for _immediately tattling to Black Hat_ that you did an unauthorized procedure on my poor little eyeballs’”.

Ooh, he's really pulling out all the stops, even stooping so low as to put on a whiny, high-pitched voice to mock yours. You stand your ground and brandish the keycard in your hand like you’re about to cast a spell.

“You are _so_ delusional if you think these eyeballs are any improvement over just being blind or dead. Yeah, thanks a lot for the fucking laser beam blasters that melt holes through the wall, they’ll _really_ come in handy at business luncheons. Who gave you the right to keep that little tidbit from me, anyway? Thought I could use a surprise?” 

You position yourself between Flug and the keypad, determined to get an explanation out of him right here, right now.

Flug’s whole body jolts like he’s been defibrillated as he registers what you’re saying. If you could see under the bag, you’d see the color drain from his face. Still, he’s not exactly subtle. You see his eyes widen in an expression of alarm.

“What? What’s the matter?”

You continue to shake the card at Flug vigorously, suspicion rising with your volume, but he says nothing.

Flug stands stiffly at a distance, seemingly torn between several uncomfortable options. His fingers twitch.

You’re getting impatient with his silence and decide to ignore him until he’s ready to talk. Before your keycard reaches the sensor, Flug launches himself at you, pinning you against the lab door with the entirety of his weight. He’s not that strong, but he takes you completely by surprise.

Screeching in disgust and confusion, you jab at his chest with your palms, trying to push him off. He doesn’t budge. You balk at the smell of his horrible nitrile gloves grabbing your face and try to stomp on his toes.

“Hold still!” Flug snaps, gripping your face between his fingers like a vice. He pinches your sore eyelids open and studies your prosthetics, first left, then right, ignoring your protests. Whatever he confirms from this invasion is clearly cause for alarm, because he lets out a hiss of frustration through gritted teeth. The keypad digs into your shoulder as you writhe.

“Get _off_ me!” You bellow and wrench your chin away. “What the fuck is your problem?” 

This guy has no boundaries. Where does he get off grabbing you like that? Did he think you wouldn’t have just shown him your eyes if he had asked to see them like a normal person? Then again if he’s used to dealing with the likes of Demencia, maybe not. And, judging by the doctor’s questionable headgear, he is clearly not a normal person. 

You wonder if Black Hat gives a shit about harassment complaints. Probably not.

You’re just preparing to kick him in the nads when Flug abruptly lets you loose and, snatching the keycard from your fingers, opens the lab doors. Without a word, he pulls you toward his workspace by your arm. He seems rattled.

“Wait, wait! Will you please just tell me what’s going on!?” you exclaim, practically running to keep up with his frantic pace. Flug’s heading for an alcove off to the side of the lab, past your office door. 

“Those are _not_ the eyes I thought I gave you! Just shut up and give me a minute to figure out what’s going on.”

You continue to protest until he threatens chemical subjugation. Not wanting to call his bluff, you let him figure things out in silence.

Eventually, Flug absently pieces together fragments of an explanation as he rifles through a secure-looking cabinet marked BIOMECHANICAL PROSTHETIC WEAPONRY. Very specific.

Based on Flug’s completely unprofessional reaction, you gather you weren’t supposed to have lethal robot technology implanted in you. That much, at least, makes sense.

“You were supposed to get a limited-function prototype for an advanced oculocentric psychic weapon. The sets must have been switched up, I have no idea how. Goddammit, we’re so screwed.” His voice is barely above a mutter, practically talking to himself.

It seems like an issue of negligible importance. What’s he going to do, ask for them back? They still work, after all. Maybe you could even learn to control when they activate, if he’d bother to tell you how. You fail to see how this is such an enormous problem.

From the back of a shelf, Flug pulls out a small, densely armored box with a glass lid. You peer inside. Two shiny black prosthetic eyes, seemingly identical to yours.

“So. Are they the ones you mistook for these?” You point at the implants in your head. Your migraine is starting to come back, along with your exhaustion. Flug only sighs and pinches what you assume is the bridge of his nose.

“I take it _these_ ,” you point at the box, “aren’t the shooty ones.” Flug gives you a sidelong, exasperated look. 

“No. They are not the ‘shooty ones’. Correct.”

He’s already seated in a chair, rifling quickly through stacks of notes and documents to see where he went wrong. There are at least five half-empty mugs of coffee in the immediate vicinity. At risk of sounding pushy, you try to gently coax him into revealing more information.

“Okay. You seem super upset but, what exactly is the problem? Can't you just add parts to the prototype? They’re mostly the same besides the lasers, right?” Freaking out won’t solve anything. You try to remain helpful and calm.

“Why don’t you leave the brainstorming to me, mathlete. And no, that would take resources and time I don’t have.” 

You take a closer look at the eyes in the box. They appear identical in every way to the ones in your head. Glasslike, black interior, reflective cornea over dark apertures, wicked-looking filaments and wires jutting from their posteriors. Flug must have been able to tell the difference at a glance. But that begs the question: if he could tell them apart, why didn’t he notice that during the operation? The eyes must have different internal processes, rare mechanisms for destruction. How curious.

“What kinds of resources?” you press once more.

Flug spins in his chair to face you. He’s not going to entertain your questions for much longer, it seems. He lets out a sudden barrage of hostility and pent-up frustration, all directed at you.

“Never mind that, you wouldn’t know the first thing about it if I told you! Last I checked, you're a paper-pusher kept on the payroll by a nepotistic blood contract, not intellectual merit. You don’t seem to know much about anything, do you? You just stand there with your—your _face_ and bitch at me and somehow get granted extensions that I never get the courtesy of having. Speaking of that, I believe you have work to do. If I need your input, _I’ll ask._ ” 

Flug huffily resumes flipping through stacks of paper without so much as a backwards glance. For the first time, you're at a loss for words.

Rattled by the doctor’s sudden outburst, you slink away to your cubbyhole of an office. The place looks even more ugly and cramped in shades of grey. Certainly you're no stranger to getting lectured; Flug's rant gave you a different sour taste, one that will stick around for the next couple of days. Your mind continues to race despite the budding ache.

Even if Flug manages to figure things out, his solution will most likely involve you going under the knife again, a unattractive prospect after what you've already endured. That must be avoided unless absolutely necessary. Whether he thinks highly enough of you to bother replacing them with another pair, you can't be sure. If he can't get those mysterious resources he mentioned, it's likely he'll need whatever is in your current pair. This is more complicated than you're prepared to deal with now, but you resolve to find the optimal solution for all parties involved, regardless of Flug's feelings on the matter.

It's irritating how much he underestimates you. You won't back down.

Head and eyes still throbbing, you feel your face flush with indignation as you close the door. You log into your computer and start on the long and arduous revision process. Right now, it's all you can do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think! I appreciate all the encouragement. New chapter should be out next week.


	7. Eduction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You make your ambitions clear to Black Hat. Something gets lost. A solution (of sorts) is reached with Flug.

Something catches your attention through the glass.

That’s funny, you didn’t think Hat Island was near a flight path. Your eyes fixate on the tiny birdlike shape in the sky, visible now as it enters the peripherals of Black Hat’s office window.

From what you've heard, there exist certain anomalies regarding the island’s geographical location. Compasses don’t seem to work right in this place. You’ve also heard the sky here is red, but you’re currently unable to verify that, being colorblind and all.

Yet the airplane continues tracing its invisible line, parallel to the horizon. Under your steady gaze, it comes to an almost imperceptible, but certain stop high above the shimmering ocean.

In your mind’s eye, you can imagine reaching out with two fingers to pluck it from the blank scenery.

A mere second passes before its nose tips downward. Surely this must cause pandemonium onboard. The arc looks graceful, from afar. Though you know the passengers within must be screaming and wailing and praying, the racket is thwarted by distance and the well-insulated fuselage. They might as well stay quiet, for all it’s worth. 

You hold your breath. The plane plummets to the sea.

Black Hat clears his throat.

“Congratulations, you did the bare minimum I asked for. That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Your boss sneers from his gargantuan armchair, not even bothering to look directly at you. He seems quite relaxed compared to your previous meetings. There are no eldritch appendages to be seen.

You tear your eyes away from the window to focus on your boss, who’s placing your final drafts into a stamped manila envelope. In the end, the extension provided more than enough time for your paltry revisions. You even had a few extra hours to yourself. And, just in case Black Hat seemed receptive today, you’ve drafted up a little proposition. 

Your boss notes that you haven’t left a single careless mistake, pointing out that this is the standard you must adhere to from now on. No more exceptions, but you already knew that.

It feels good to get some recognition from Black Hat, aloof as he may be. Events from the past few days have emboldened you enough to try to put things in motion. 

You realize what you desire is a long shot, but you can’t give up now, not when you’re so close. This whole post-promotion experience seems like an awful lucid dream you’ve only just now figured out how to control. 

Nodding your head deeply in consideration, you attempt to speak your mind without causing offense.

“On the contrary, Lord Black Hat. It was challenging to limit myself to my father’s capabilities.”

Black Hat’s insect-like eyebrows twitch as he fixates on you for the first time since this meeting began. You see a ripple of amusement play across his shadowed face.

“Oh? And what does that mean, pray tell.” 

A dangerously toothy grin leers at you from across the desk. He’s entertaining you, just as you had hoped. Your palms begin to sweat. Despite your preparations, you know you’re about to take a big risk.

“Well”, you begin, raising your voice to a conferential level. “If I may ask, what do you believe was my father’s biggest accomplishment while in this position?” 

Black Hat blinks his visible eye, smile faltering briefly as he considers your question.

“Your father, I suppose, marginally boosted shareholder values. All this digital transformation the mortals love so much. His contributions granted us a few more loyal subjects.”

Black Hat’s bizarrely medieval choice of words amuses you, but you don’t dare show it. An irritated look spreads across his face regardless.

“Are you just trying to get me to praise your late father for sentimental purposes? I should have you know that the mere notion disgusts me. I do not give compliments freely.” 

You shake your head vigorously. 

“Not my intention in the least. My father’s commitment to improving the banking service was valuable, yes, but he left a few major stones unturned.” 

Pause for effect,

“That’s where I come in.”

Black Hat remains silent and stone-faced. If he’d wanted you to shut up, you’d know by now. The room is so quiet, all you can hear is your own tremulous breathing. You stand up straighter and take a deep breath before diving in.

“Lord Black Hat, my family has ensured your financial network remains intact through advances in technology. Think about how different this industry was, even a few decades ago. The landscape of corporate villainy is always changing. Given our valuable position, our systems must be continually updated in order to stay the best.”

Black Hat nods sagely, lacing his fingers together on the desk. He, of all people, must know firsthand the importance of staying ahead of the game. After all, he’s been playing it for centuries.

“My father’s innovations for the customers of this bank wouldn’t have been possible without my supervision of the security aspect. I was the one to make sure our new networks stay impervious to hackers and government spies. We’ve never had a single data breach, not under my watch. Now that I’m in his position, I see many opportunities to expand our profit via automation of certain services, culling outdated intermediaries, increasing customer data collection and analysis, eventually transitioning to operating solely through blockchain—”

Something shears the air inches from your face, too fast for you to see more than a blur. A nervous glance behind you reveals a dagger-like letter opener trembling in the wall, point embedded in the fancy papering. 

The message is loud and clear. 

“Am I supposed to be impressed by your long words and notions of digital wizardry?” Black Hat’s voice is grave, dangerously soft. You’re cowed into silence. He leans forward in his chair, the ambient temperature around his desk growing colder by the second. 

“Your job is what I say it is, no more, no less. Clearly you believe your father was awash in free time, otherwise you wouldn’t try to tell me what you plan on doing with yours. However, your duties are bespoke and I will make the final call regarding company decisions. You are solely the liaison between this headquarters and the mindless worker bees you call your family. They are your responsibility. Their mistakes are your mistakes. The contract makes this abundantly clear.” 

Black Hat seems smug as he puts you in your place. There’s no shift in his appearance, no monstrous toothy darkness to consume you, yet the sting of dismissal is equally hard to bear.

Your face burns with humiliation and you shift your weight back and forth between your feet, not wanting to let the issue go. A few moments pass before you can no longer control yourself.

“My family is worthless.” There’s no hiding the resentment in your soft voice. 

Black Hat snorts in apparent agreement and leans back in his chair. He picks at invisible specks on his gloves in an affected show of nonchalance.

“Believe me, I am aware.” Your boss cackles. “I suppose you’ll be desiring to annul your ancestor’s contract, if that’s where this is going. You do understand the consequences of that, don’t you? Fire and brimstone for you and all? Mua-ha.”

“Black Hat, this company is my life. I can’t speak for my relatives.” You look determinedly at your master, eye to fabricated eye.

“My family does not invest themselves in this business the way I do. This has been evident to me from the start. You’ve seen my credentials, you know my contributions. The changes I’m suggesting, provided you grant me the clearance, would negate many of the roles my relatives are currently sitting comfortably in. I will oust them with automated, trustworthy systems of my own design. This is my only goal, and I’m pleading with you now to consider my worth not within the context of my blood, but instead for my abilities.”

That’s all you’ve got. You stop your chattering teeth by clenching them as hard as you can. Discreetly wiping your sweaty palms on your thighs, you wait for a response for what feels like a year. 

Black Hat rises to his full height, casting a long, aberrant shadow. You watch as he moves fluidly to a dark wooden shelf, and removes a slim book bound in crumbling black leather. 

“It’s been a long time since I’ve picked this up,” Black Hat is uncharacteristically solemn. He approaches you with the same silent levitation, and you yet again feel a jab of pain between your ears as Black Hat draws near. He drops the book into your hands. It feels like it’s about to fall apart.

Cautiously turning it over, you see a familiar stamped seal, the swirling, archaic symbol for your family’s surname from the old country. You know what it must be.

“Why are you giving this to me?” you stutter. Black Hat disappears behind you, out of eyeshot but you can sense his proximity, the coldness of the air. Given your rising headache, you can tell he’s hovering closely at your back. Fingers creep along your stiff shoulders and your head throbs with every stroke.

When Black Hat speaks, the sound tickles your right ear intimately. His otherworldly voice resonates through your skull.

“You seem like the kind of descendant who might appreciate your progenitor’s insights. Augustus and I had quite a few discussions regarding the future of our organization, not that he would have anticipated any of this. Your nonsense stirred up some old memories.”

Augustus’ journal, with its yellowed pages and broken spine, practically begs to be opened. No, seriously, you can almost hear a tiny wisp of a voice. You restrain yourself from partaking in it here, vowing to do so later when your blood-brain barrier isn’t being throttled. 

It’s a struggle to keep your thoughts clear over Black Hat’s scratchy whispers and the ministrations of his fingers at your neck, and the faint, mournful echoes of that unknown voice.

“Knowing he contracted with me out of some warped sense of familial affection makes me sick.” Black Hat mutters. 

“But, times were different back then. He had no illusions about our arrangement, of that much I’m convinced. Nonetheless, it’ll be interesting to see what he thinks.” 

You don’t immediately register the implication of your master’s remark, the reference made in present tense.

Mercifully, the hands pull away from your shoulders, and Black Hat slinks back to his desk to rest his fingers on the glossy surface. He faces the window, almost pensive. The book feels natural in your hands, like it’s come home. You cradle it protectively without thinking.

“Will you consider my request, Lord Black Hat?” You dare to ask. 

His reflection in the large window looks back towards you, not an ounce of amusement in his expression. Yet again, you thank your lucky stars Black Hat didn’t decide to eat you as punishment for your insolence. Though, there is still time for him to change his mind. 

Black Hat’s response is surprisingly receptive, though not at all what you want to hear.

“You’re required to stay on the premises until I make a decision. Currently you’re in possession of top-secret laboratory property, thereby making you laboratory property as well. Flug wants you back in his lab for testing on those ill-gotten prosthetics. Make it worth his while. You’re dismissed.” 

There’s no time for you to protest. A strong gust of icy air somersaults you backwards and out the door, depositing you against the far wall of the corridor. Thankfully the book’s clenched tightly in your hands. 

The heavy door slams shut, and you hope the sound doesn’t attract certain individuals the way it did last time.

To your dismay (but not to your surprise), you hear a scuttling noise from above. Demencia drops down from the ceiling just as you finish your thought. At least this aspect of her is predictable. You greet her with a casual nod, edging away slowly.

“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” Demencia declares in her sing-song voice, tinged with a hint of suspicion. She eyes the ratty book in your hand. You tighten your grip on it protectively.

“What’s that?” Demencia gestures at the journal with a wrinkled nose. You shrug.

“It’s just old family property. Probably a cursed book Black Hat’s tricking me into reading, most likely to summon the ghost of my dead great-great grandfather to possess and torment my brain for eternity. You know, classic Black Hat.”

Demencia adopts an expression of agonized jealousy, but refrains from delivering the beatdown you know she'd love to inflict upon you in favor of rushing at the office you emerged from.

“No fair!” She cries, battering the heavy door with her fists with the passion of an entire angry mob, pitchforks and all. 

“I want a haunted book! Black Hat, sweetie, open the door! Why isn’t there a book for me!?” 

You make your quiet escape as Demencia preoccupies herself. Mercifully, she doesn’t appear to notice your absence.

Your rapid pace through the winding hallways of the house is bolstered by tingling excitement. The book has an inexplicable magnetism, drawing your eyes back to it again and again despite the risk of losing yourself around a wrong turn. 

Many of your relatives know a great deal about the story of Augustus, the one who initiated the blood contract. There are no more audible whispers, nothing like what you heard in the office just now, but there’s obviously more to this journal than mere personal writings. 

Of course you’ve heard the tales of midnight rituals and bewitched sacrifices, those are the simple bedtime stories from childhood. Augustus was more than just another man who wore a black hat, however.

You just need to find a quiet space to examine its contents; Flug can go fuck himself if he thinks you’ll turn yourself in to be vivisected or god knows what else. With any luck, this hallway won’t lead back around to the laboratory. You need eyes to read, after all. 

Black Hat definitely hasn’t shown this book to any of your family members besides you. Generations of missing writing, suddenly at your disposal? It’s hard to not feel special. A broad, excited grin adorns your face as you round a corner.

You slam into something soft and dense.

“Baw!” 5.0.5 exclaims as you’re momentarily caught in his fluffy stomach, having barrelled into him with speed. You hadn’t seen him for a few days, and come to think of it, you had actually missed his presence. There’s just something about the bear-thing’s appearance that elicits an abnormal reaction in you. He’s just irresistible, like a baby animal.

Spitting tufts of hair from your mouth, you peel away from the large experiment and brush at his fur apologetically. It’s hard to be mad at something so cute. You’d rather be surprised by him than by anything else lurking about these halls, anyway. 

5.0.5 wraps his huge paws around your waist, effortlessly lifting you into a crushing hug. Your spine pops, causing a nervous laugh from you and a gasp of breath.

“Okay, 5.0.5, I’m happy to see you too, but please put me down now,” you beg nicely, voice strained. 5.0.5 makes no motion to release you from your fuzzy confinement. Your arm struggles free to pull at his ear. This is suspicious.

“Hey, let go! What the— where are you taking me?” You demand, less nicely. He begins to walk. 

5.0.5 only emits another bearlike grunt as he trundles off through the hallway, still tightly embracing you. With a sinking feeling, you realize where exactly you’re headed. 

“Help!” No one hears your screams over 5.0.5’s furry shoulder. His paw strokes your back in what is most likely intended as a soothing gesture, but ultimately fails to relax you. You kick at his side, but his grip doesn’t loosen and he only picks up the pace the more you struggle. 

His heavy steps rattle the paintings on the walls, all the way down to the laboratory.

Flug gazes at his incoming delivery with an air of self-satisfaction. You are dumped unceremoniously onto the floor, 5.0.5 having to roughly pry you from him since you’re being so uncooperative. 

5.0.5 seems somewhat remorseful as he takes his place behind the doctor, but does nothing to help you. Though he’s been gentle to you up until now, it’s obvious where his loyalty lies. Rubbing your head, you give your most ferocious expression to the pair who’ve so rudely kidnapped you.

Suddenly, you remember the book. Frantically looking around, you see no sign of it. The journal must have dropped somewhere in the hall. Seething anger licks the corners of your vision at this terrible realization, and you hop to your feet as though you’ve been burned.

Overcome with rage, you blurt out a string of unmentionable crudeness, too indecent to commit to writing. Flug hurries to place his hands over 5.0.5’s ears as the profanity echoes through the lab.

“Not in front of the children,” Flug reprimands you sternly. Ushering 5.0.5 away from your terrible influence, Flug reaches into his pocket and conjures a nasty-looking syringe with a gargantuan needle.

Nope, nope, nope. This is not happening. You quake at the prospect.

“Now, now, you knew this was coming,” Flug seems especially unhinged today. There’s a wild edge to his voice as he approaches, cautiously circling around like you’re some kind of captive beast. You don’t dare turn your back on him. 

If you had to take a wild guess, this utterly unnecessary rigmarole is due to the doctor’s inability to solve the mix-up with your eyes. Flug doesn’t strike you as the sort of man who takes mistakes on the chin, as evident by how desperate he’s acting. You don’t feel sorry for him at all.

Keeping the doctor at arm’s length, you quickly scan your surroundings for avenues of escape. It would be a long shot to get to the door, and your office closet is a dead-end. Prospects are grim.

“Flug, you know there’s an easier way to do this,” you warn. You face him head on, squaring your shoulders. If necessary, you will punch him in the throat.

There’s no hiding the exasperation Flug’s been grappling with, which couldn’t be more obvious if it was literally written on his bag. You could wipe the floor with him in a physical fight, though, and it’s obvious he’s not confident about his chances. Still brandishing the needle, he attempts to persuade you verbally.

“Listen, let’s be reasonable. Ever since the procedure you’ve been feeling nausea, headaches, blurring vision, soreness, right? Those are very real and serious symptoms of the damage those implants are doing to your grey matter.” 

Flug pleads at you with a sense of urgency as the hypodermic needle beads a droplet of shady-looking fluid from its tip.

You’re not falling for it. “Newsflash, asshole: I’ve had migraines my entire goddamn life.”

Flug is unperturbed. “Don’t you think the properties of those eyes seem a little... incompatible with your fragile human mind?” Okay, now he’s just being insulting. He does have a point though. You begrudgingly agree.

“That’s because they’re a special order from the planet Xaarchl-43, not designed for interface with humans. To be honest, the non-combat prototypes were the only ones I would even consider for human prosthetic use due to how different the internal system is. I can’t promise your body will react accordingly with my findings.” 

You’re not sure whether to believe Flug or not. The extraterrestrial part seems rational given the company’s clientele, but there’s still a glaring problem with his story. 

“So you’re telling me, these eyes are for aliens? Whatever, I don’t discriminate. If there’s such a huge difference, how come you didn’t notice that during the procedure? What, too _distracted_ by something?” 

The somewhat off-color suggestion pops into your mind with zero forethought but you tack it on anyway with a furtive smirk, hoping it’ll piss him off.

You’ve never seen a grown man stamp his foot before. Flug fiercely denies your insinuation with the overly-defensive, panicked attitude of a teenager who’s just been caught with binoculars at the window.

_The doctor doth protest too much, methinks._

It’s enough to shift your satisfaction from teasing him into the territory of uncomfortable doubt. You don’t push the matter any further in case Flug decides to confess anything unprofessional, and quickly steer the conversation back to your eyes. 

“I know you’re not invested in my personal health, so no need to fake your concern. We both know it’s a serious problem for business if you can’t deliver these eyes. Also, you’re assuming I don’t know anything about the mechanisms of the laser functions. I might not be a scientist, but guess who had to revise an 80-page dossier from Shi-Bo regarding directed-energy microtech weaponry?” 

Flug balks. Clearly he hadn’t made the connection, committed as he is to rudely undermining everything you do. He prepares to rebuff you once more but you cut him off, to which he responds with a stance of sullen impatience.

“Currently Shi-Bo holds the raw materials you’d need. I know you won’t be able to synthesize anything without them, and I know trying to get their satellite labs to send you anything right now is a no-go, considering they’re under scrutiny by several international authorities. So it’s just not an option within your timeframe.” 

This whole time, you’ve been inching away from Flug and his cartoonish syringe, but he’s started to catch on. He’s taking slow, subtle steps closer. Just reaching out and grabbing the needle crosses your mind, but it's too risky. 

Flug looks more impatient by the second. You decide it’s time to switch gears before the doctor tries anything drastic. 

“So, what if I told you I could get you those materials expedited from the source, no middleman required?” 

“What, from the mine? Not a chance. Good luck trying to buy from them, since the mineral in question is a) unbelievably rare, and b) contracted to Shi-Bo exclusively. There’s literally no way to get around that,” Flug scoffs, inching closer still. 

You tap your chin and give the doctor an enigmatic sideways glance. It’s nothing for you to turn on the charm, what’s uncertain is whether or not Flug will fall for it. 

“There is, if you give them a good enough reason.” 

At that, you’ve piqued his interest. Flug has stopped circling you, but there’s suspicion in his posture. Emboldened, you take a small step forward while still keeping well out of range.

“I’ll tell you more if you put away the needle.”

Flug squirms, clearly conflicted, but eventually places the needle back in his pocket. You tell him he can keep it on his desk, and then you two can have a real conversation.

“At least give me the courtesy of that, please. Be a gentleman,” you coax. 

Flug eventually cedes, either due to his genuine interest in your plan or your beguiling ways. Regardless, you know he’s too weak to resist. Sucker.

A minute or so later, you’re huddled before the work laptop in your cramped office and Flug is leaning in beside you, hesitant but clearly intrigued by what you’ve shown him. The documents you’d pored over tirelessly for the last several days provide you with certain crucial details regarding the raw materials in question. 

The plan, which only began forming after your argument with Flug a couple days ago, is now fully fleshed out.

You and Flug are both aware of certain things; the main distributor being an underwater mining operation controlled by some natural resource bandit operating out of some far-flung site in the Pacific, small-fry compared to Black Hat’s influence but nonetheless uniquely positioned to demand an exorbitant price for the volatile, rare minerals they illegally dredge. 

“It’s only a matter of time until they kick the bucket,” you explain, noting that no greedy bastard running this kind of illicit operation can sustain themselves without Black Hat’s protection. Considering their fragile relationship with Shi-Bo, they’re a prime target for expansion where the company’s concerned. 

This would be a gentle nudge in that direction, and would get Flug the materials to create new eyes without subjecting you to unnecessary medical procedures. A win-win for everyone, aside from measly mining moguls.

And hey, if these people are interested, you’ve heard tell of hellishly good loan rates and small business benefits offered by a certain bank. If they’re halfway smart, they could make out decently.

“Pirates like these are used to pressure from outside influences. They won’t give in easily unless they have a tangible reason to feel threatened. So you’d think such a machinery-heavy operation, entirely dependent on these safety control systems, wouldn’t leave their back-door wide open to sabotage. But look!” 

The diagram on your screen shows the blueprints of the mining station and you point to the system name. You click through to a terminal, pulling forward relevant information as you talk. Flug watches your face, then your fingers as they work rapidly across the keys. He seems uncertain, even as you explain.

“The hydraulic pumps are governed by a system I haven’t seen used in years, especially not in modern operational tech controls. You know why?” 

Flug scrutinizes the controls, then looks up at you. His goggles reflect the glowing lines of code you’ve pulled. 

“They’re a pain in the ass to manage from onsite. Looks like someone habitually leaves their ICS in control mode, those lazy sonsabitches.” You flash a sly grin. “The whole network’s practically begging to be broken into. Look, everything’s unlocked. Like taking candy from a baby.” 

Flug signals you to shush and comes in closer to look over the code on your screen. You think he’s starting to get the gist.

“You don’t expect _me_ to write the program for this, do you? Even with enough information, it’ll still take days to figure out the network, not to mention the fact that this is a very different animal from your standard IT heist. It’s not exactly in my realm of expertise.” He rubs his temples through the bag.

So there are some things even the doctor can’t do. It’s a good thing you’re here, then.

Saying nothing, you pull up something different for him to read and wait for Flug’s eyes to widen in that rabbity, awestruck stare he gets when he sees something impressive. He gave you that look back when he tested your prosthetics for the first time. It’s one of the few non-combative expressions of his you can decipher.

“No one said you had to.” You respond simply, no longer able to stop yourself from smiling out of pride.

Bingo. Flug’s eyes are bright and as wide as saucers, just what you've been waiting to see. Bet he’s not underestimating you now.

“Wh— _how?_ Did you write this yourself? When did you do all this?” He sputters.

You give an exaggerated shrug, which turns into an indulgent roll of the shoulders as you lean back in your chair. 

Flug’s eyes seem to bulge against his goggles as he scrolls through your lines of code, studying the bug you’ve made with undisguised wonder.

You don’t bother to tell him you wrote your first keylogger back in grade school, nor do you share the small fact that the company who invented these exact industrial controls was in fact liquidated by your bank a few years ago, leaving you free to swoop in and play around with their mechanics to your heart’s content. Out of personal interest as well as financial gain, of course, you actually taught yourself a lot about altering control codes and how to exploit more common weak spots. You’ve done this with a plethora of different security systems in your free time.

Some call it cyber-crime, you call it a hobby; one that certainly comes in handy in this line of work.

For that reason, it wasn’t a question of how you’d attack, but when. Not only is the mine staffed by apparent idiots who don’t know how to properly lock their systems, the coding itself is of the type you’re already very familiar with. Writing the override controls to shut the whole thing down was a piece of cake. Let’s throw in some simple ransomware to tie it all together, too.

You’ll hold them hostage in their own facility; stop the hydraulics, make the demands, and encrypt their data as collateral. Infection chances are sky-high as it is, what with the lax security you’ve observed. Truly serendipitous.

Flug’s still not over the plan. He can barely restrain the tremble in his voice as he scoots even closer, bag inches from your screen. He’s practically in your lap.

“So when do we do this? What will our demands be?” He cracks his knuckles. You roll your chair back for some breathing room, but immediately bump against the office door.

“I dunno, you’re the scientist. How much will you need?” Flug ponders a moment. His answer surprises you.

“All of it. We’ll take everything they’ve got. After all, we can’t hold their systems ransom for a pittance, that would make no sense.” He strokes his chin, gloved fingers disappearing under his bag. That works, you suppose. 

“Okay, should we give the rest to Shi-Bo, since that way we’ll still have control over the materials? No, a large windfall would be too suspicious. Obviously it’s a pretty big gamble, even with the ease of access. The miners might resist more than we anticipate.” You ponder alongside the doctor.

Throughout this conversation with Flug, as you explained the finer points of your plot, you’ve noticed a pronounced difference in his already strange mood. His manic desperation has since morphed into, well. A glance tells all.

He’s hunched over at an acute angle from his chair with his hands steepled under his face, gazing at your laptop screen in an unnerving fashion. The way the lights from overhead grant his eyewear a sinister glint only serve to highlight how intense this change is. He looks pensive, yet wired. His right leg jiggles rapidly out of excitement or anxiety. You can barely pick out what he’s mumbling.

“... the terms of the arrangement after we shut down the safety systems, and if they don’t comply outright, we’ll throw the power. They’ll be more than happy to part with their haul once we give them a taste of danger.” Flug’s voice is fraught and restless as he talks, finger scrolling aimlessly.

What’s with all the ‘we’ he keeps using? It’s your plan, not his. Also, what he’s suggesting is a little more violent than your original intent.

“Just to be clear, are you suggesting we destroy the rig altogether? Cutting the power could lead to gas buildup or worse. There’d surely be casualties,” Your voice trails to a mumble.

Flug is staring at you incredulously, as though he’s trying to decide if you’re joking. Slowly, he nods, as though the idea is obvious and you’re some kind of idiot. 

Throwing your hands in the air, you start to vehemently defend yourself but Flug silences you with a tense grip on your forearm. In your shock, you don’t even struggle. His fingertips squeeze your flesh enough to bruise, and his goggles seem to emit their own frenetic glow. The cramped office seems stiflingly small. 

“They won’t give in unless they have a reason to feel threatened. Your own words, no? We'll shut the whole thing down. Come on, don’t tell me you’re afraid of breaking a few eggs.” The man whose authority you’ve pointlessly challenged over and over is breathlessly close. Droplets of sweat creep down your spine.

At Flug’s taunting words, you shake your head in denial. His adage made you a little hungry, but that’s not what’s making you squirm. There’s an unfamiliar feeling in a different, clandestine part of your chest. Identifying emotions has never been your strong suit. You’re no stranger to shame, though, so shame it must be.

Yes, how disgraceful that your pretense of morals was so transparent. Flug won’t call out your weak spots again, that much you’ll make sure of. Your face feels hot.

The thrum of unrecognizable yearning emptiness remains.

It occurs to you that your impression of the doctor up til now may have been somewhat flawed, or perhaps you’ve somehow been misled into believing he got this job by any means other than committing atrocities on a mass scale. After all, Black Hat didn’t appoint Flug as second-in-command for his charity work. 

Due to his conceit and relative indifference towards you, last few days notwithstanding, you’ve gotten used to treating him with disrespect. This is the way you habitually operate around your relatives at the bank, especially considering you’re not inclined to trust the doctor any more than you trust your subordinates.

But he’s not a subordinate, is he? You’re technically supposed to answer to him. Flug removes his hand from your arm, leaving a sore spot. He turns back towards the laptop screen and nebbishly adjusts his goggles, like nothing at all just happened. He points to the lower part of your screen.

“It looks like there’s a few missing sections down here. You should probably fix that now; the sooner we get the ball rolling, the sooner we can move forward. I want their rig shut down by the end of tomorrow night.” 

Obviously, he’s confident in the plot, enough to be giving you orders. You feel like you can no longer say it’s your plan, despite having done all the work. Annoyed, you turn back towards Flug, who’s decided to start flipping through the papers on your desk like he owns the place. You swipe them from his hands somewhat aggressively.

“Um, excuse me, those are not for you. And all this,” you gesticulate at the screen, “means I’m keeping these eyes. No more operations, don't touch me. That’s the point. Got it?”

Flug absently pokes his head out the door, scanning the lab for who-knows-what. He’s not paying attention to you, either that or he’s being deliberately evasive.

“Sure thing, hon. You want a coffee? A little pick-me-up?”

You cringe. ‘Hon’? Flug’s getting a little too comfortable with you, god knows where that came from. You don’t think you like this manic side of him very much. He looks better when he’s cowering in fear.

“Fine, whatever,” you mutter, relieved at his prompt departure.

With a sinking feeling in your stomach, you divert your attention to tweaking the code. This process has always been weirdly therapeutic, and you soon are lulled into a false sense of security. 

When Flug returns to your workspace with a steaming mug of coffee, you don’t suspect a thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, Flug. That boy ain't right. Well, hope you enjoyed this chapter! I'm eager to hear what you think.  
> (Disclaimer: I am not a hacker. If you happen to be one, spare me the ridicule and pretend this all made sense.)


	8. Exculpate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A recollection of a simpler time. You get some target practice, and have it out with Flug. Demencia's unwell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I must admit, there's not a ton of plot to be found in this chapter. Consider it an interim?  
> The action will pick up next week, I promise. For now, just bear with me and this overly-convoluted story I'm trying to tell.

_OCTOBER, FIVE YEARS PRIOR._

For the millionth time, you wish you had your father’s charisma. Alas, between the accelerated grad school courses and your demanding internship, you don’t really get out much to practice the fine art of social manipulation.

Applause, hors’ d'oeuvres, an eager audience of well-heeled hundreds circling like sharks and your father’s in the thick of it, as per usual. He gives his boring speech, hooray, none of it matters one damn bit. 

At barely eighteen, you’re easily the youngest one here, but (and this is a common observation of yours) the wealthy adults around you seem comparatively juvenile. It goes without saying, then, that this exclusive gala, one of the many self-congratulatory events for the freakishly wealthy a.k.a your family, makes you feel much like a fish out of water.

 _When I’m in charge, these parties will be the first to go,_ you think bitterly to yourself.

These abominable shows of parasitic goodwill you’re forced to attend make you want to puke every time. You know where the money and power really exchanges hands, and it’s definitely not here; not like that’ll stop opportunistic slimebags like the middle-aged man sitting next to you. 

“My, what beautiful eyes you have,” the man croons at you with a coastal mainland accent, too liquored up to act even mildly respectful. He knows exactly who you are and what family you’re from, obviously he wouldn’t give a rat’s ass otherwise. 

He looks you up and down piggishly over the rim of his wine glass.

“An exotic beauty, of rare form in this country. Your family’s women are so well-bred. I’m a long-time colleague of your father, even went to his first wedding. Have you ever considered modeling? You’d be instantly successful, I’m sure. My firm’s based in Shanghai, we of course set the standards in these parts. The ambiguous ethnicity look is quite in vogue, as you must be aware.”

 _Ew._ That was like, five different insults rolled into one disgusting package. Additionally, the assumption that flattery will get anywhere with you automatically betrays his intelligence level. 

If there’s one thing you hate, it’s being talked down to, especially by dirty old men.

He’s verbally petting you like you’re some kind of floozy. Does he think all women who dare to be seen in public aspire to be ogled at? Does he have any idea how badly you could ruin his life if you really wanted to? You wish your dress wasn’t so revealing, he’s practically salivating at your rack.

Interactions like these always make you forget what you’ve learned in anger management.

The barely-concealed hatred on your face only grows as the man begins talking about how he has a son about your age, oh for fuck’s sake. Make him stop. You’ve heard this spiel before. 

A large hand clamps over the boorish man’s shoulder pad from behind and gives a threatening squeeze. 

“Her beautiful eyes are up there, comrade. Now, I’ll need to borrow my sister’s company if you don’t mind.”

Romulus leans in, having materialized from nowhere in the nick of time. He pushes down sharply on the man next to you, almost shoving him out of his seat and spilling his wine. 

Your eldest brother makes a show of loudly inviting you for a breath of fresh air, speaking Mandarin so nearby guests can eavesdrop.

The drunk bastard immediately backs off, profusely apologizing in Romulus’ direction (not to you, the affronted lady). You don’t even bother to excuse yourself from the table. Taking your brother’s arm in relief, you head for the exit.

As much as you hate when Romulus comes to your rescue, the ladylike public image you’re constantly reminded to uphold makes it hard for you to defend yourself. It also doesn’t help that you’ve recently developed a potty-mouth that you can never seem to get under control, much like your temper. 

You hiss at him once you both are out of earshot.

“Romy, where the fuck were you all night? You left me hanging with these assholes, dad kept asking for you, and I had to pinch myself awake through all the speeches. I am in serious need of a smoke.” 

As you pass by a table of voluptuous women, your brother’s demeanor changes and he gives a salacious wink to some purple-clad bimbo about twice his age.

You suppose that answers your question. You notice he's sporting a conspicuous hickey on his neck, only partially hidden by his suit collar. He’s also rather jittery, and it’s very likely he’s just returned from doing a line or two in the bathroom.

“Oh, so while you were out having fun and chasing cougar tail, I had to fend off fuck-ugly bastards trying to set me up? Unreal. Good to know it’s just the average night out with dad,” you grouse at Romulus’ shoulder.

He only chuckles and pulls you closer, voice dropping conspiratorially.

“It is definitely not the average night out. Stage-side bar, corner right, cheap suits,” you hear him breathe into your ear. 

Your stomach drops as you glance over. Intel said they’d be on the lookout for spies, so who the fuck are those guys? There’s a couple of them, subtly out of place among the surrounding jet setters.

“Is dad still at his table?” You ask, already stressed. Your brother nods and leads you over to the glass elevator, the one to the rooftop lounge. 

As the two of you ascend above the banquet hall, you notice a few more shady-looking individuals sitting nearby your father. You’d recognize them anywhere.

“It’s Men Without Hats, isn’t it,” you mutter grimly as the elevator emerges topside. 

“Definitely.”

Singapore’s densely sparkling skyline is shrouded in a haze of humidity and pollution, always worse at night. The terrace is dark, devoid of partygoers. Romulus passes you a cigarette which you gratefully light. 

He fills you in on what you already guessed; the taskforce investigating Black Hat’s trade negotiations has been extra vigilant this quarter. Of course, your family’s always a prime target.

See, this is exactly what you’ve been saying. Just another reason not to have fancy galas flaunting the wealth you made from money laundering for a criminal mega-enterprise. It only serves to attract rats.

“You don’t think they’d be stupid enough to try anything tonight?” You ask your brother. He takes a long drag of his own cigarette.

“Not unless they want their cover blown, the place is crawling with security. They’re totally grasping at straws. Bet you they even think Black Hat himself will make an appearance at one of these stupid things.” Romulus laughs mirthlessly. 

The running joke regarding your company’s elusive benefactor has long stopped being funny. It’s like inviting Beyoncé to your birthday party, or something inane like that. 

You flick your spent filter off the side of the building. Something’s off about all this.

Romulus doesn’t often seek your company for company’s sake, not after you humiliated him at last year’s seminar. He’s conniving, always with ulterior motives, but unfortunately not halfway smart enough for your father to consider for heir apparent. 

You know he knows it.

“Romy, this isn’t all you brought me up here for, right? Seriously, what the fuck are you trying to pull?” You stare him down. He flashes you an artificial grin.

“Maybe, maybe not. Maybe I have no clue what you’re on about, or maybe I needed to give those dumb spies a little distraction from dad. Now that you’re interning the director’s office, they’ve bumped you up on their persons of interest list for sure.” 

You hate him. 

Despite your brother's coke-addled bullshit, you nervously scan your peripherals for any MWH shadow ops waiting to pounce. The two of you appear to have the place to yourselves.

Mentally, you’re kicking yourself for allowing him to lead you to an isolated space. Whatever he has in mind, you don’t think it’s for your benefit. 

The path back to the elevator’s blocked by your brother’s tall figure. You glare at his arrogant face and respond with derision, clutching the guard rail. 

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that. You’re pretty high-up yourself, Romy, just not high enough. Still think dad’s gonna name you successor, I bet. I wonder when he’s gonna break the news.”

Much of your family has difficulties controlling their anger, probably due to those “exotic genes”. Romulus is no exception. The succession issue is a sore spot for him and he knows you’re currently in the lead as far as your dad’s concerned. 

You always like to hit where it hurts. And once you get going, it’s hard to stop.

“Better start treating me nice if you want that sweet, sweet job security. You know, I hear there’s openings in the mailroom. Might not even have to take a piss test.” 

Your brother clenches his jaw in fury. Before you can dodge, he comes down hard on your cheek with a backhanded slap that echoes across the terrace. The sting from the blow makes your ears ring. Luckily, you aren’t knocked clear off your feet.

You bare your fingernails and prepare to claw at his neck, but he catches your wrist mid-swing and brutally jabs the palmar side with the lit end of his cigarette. Your tendons sizzle horribly. 

The sudden, excruciating pain makes your legs weak. Not wanting to give your brother the satisfaction of hearing you scream, you bite it back with tears flooding your eyes.

“Alright. Let’s get this straight, princess.” His eyes are glassy, pupils blown wide. He’s almost lifting you off your feet by a death grip on your wrist, granting an unpleasant view of the dizzying height.

Ordinarily, Romulus doesn’t scare you much, but right now, he’s all coked up and much bigger than you are and you’re not sure if he’ll end up doing anything drastic on this roof tonight.

“I will _snap_ your little neck before—”

A click, and a quick bright light cuts through the tension, momentarily blinding you both. A flashbulb. You’ve got company.

Panicked, Romulus lets you loose and squints into the darkness. It’s impossible to get a good look past the terrace. 

“Who’s out there?!” He yells out, savagery in his voice. 

That single moment of preoccupation saves your ass. You front-kick Romulus in the small of his back, sending him to the ground, and take off across the rooftop. By some miracle, you narrowly make it to the elevator. 

The doors slam shut in your brother’s face, and you slump against the glass. Once you’re semi-calm, you shakily call for a cab, the night officially over no matter what your fucking father has to say about it.

Later, as you fume in your en suite, cold tap water streaming over the circular burn on your wrist, you try desperately to think of any conceivable person who’d take an illicit photograph of your rooftop tussle. 

Romulus and his penchant for the high life has always been a hot ticket for the tabloids, but it's probably not paparazzi as they’re strictly banned from the galas. And by all rights, MWH agents are pretty pathetic, but even they must be smart enough not to make themselves so obviously known. 

Mind racing, you circle back to Romy’s evasive, suspicious behavior. Yet, he seemed just as surprised and threatened as you were by the mysterious photographer.

Whoever it was, you hope they’re on your side, though they’re most likely not. 

Then again, hardly anyone is.

-

Inhale. Exhale. Something’s tickling your nose. 

Blearily, you attempt to open your eyes, but it’s either pitch black in your surroundings or you’re blind again. You blink a couple times but nothing comes. Panic doesn’t immediately strike, as your head feels like it’s been hit by a sack of cement and it’s difficult to get your bearings.

A strange pressure on your chest prevents you from moving, and you’re inexplicably reminded of Romulus, of all people. You haven’t heard from him in a couple years, of which you’re thankful. His face swims up through your hazy thoughts and your wrist itches.

Sometimes, when you’re stressed, bad memories return to you in dreams. Were you dreaming just now? When did you even fall asleep? The last thing you remember was working on that damned virus. And being really annoyed with Flug. And having a sip of some frankly horrible coffee.

Shit. 

He fucked you over again, didn’t he.

Another tickle. You feel a light tug on your hair, the strands shift somewhere overhead and to your horror, you hear a long, drawn-out sniff followed by a gentle little sigh. Someone’s very close, practically standing over you. Your skin crawls. Is that Flug? It better not be.

Unable to contain yourself throughout this weird violation, you gasp, and whoever’s holding your hair abruptly drops it back onto your face. You try to blow the wayward strands off your mouth. It’s not a very successful endeavor.

Now fully awake, you attempt to turn your head, but there’s something holding it in place. This is when the panic starts to form in the bottom of your stomach. Realizing you’re restrained, you try some deep breaths to stop yourself from freaking out. 

“Hello? Flug?” You call out, voice uncharacteristically timid. No response. 

You struggle to move your arms, only to find that they’re crossed tightly over your chest. It feels like you’re in a straight jacket. Through your disorientation and lack of vision, you’re having a hard time figuring out if you’re lying down or propped up. Something touches your shoulder and you yelp. Then you start to move.

The squeak of wheels underfoot alerts you to what must be happening. You’re strapped onto some sort of angled gurney, and you feel yourself tilt back as someone pushes you along.

It’s still completely dark, and you start to fear the worst. Flug better not have taken your eyes, not after everything you’ve done. 

You call out again to whoever’s pushing you, but there’s still no response. Infuriated, you curse loudly. That’s when you hear a very distinctive, somewhat offended whimper. 

“5.0.5? ...Is that you?” A low roo emanates from behind you, another dead giveaway. It’s definitely him. His soft paw rubs the top of your head, further mussing up your hair. He's always been so gentle with you. It's sad that all your interactions with him have been during various positions of confinement.

If Flug survives the beating you plan to give him, you have a lot of questions for the doctor regarding 5.0.5’s involvement in lab work. You wonder if 5.0.5 likes being an accomplice to medical crimes.

“What’s going on, 5.0.5? Where are we going? Are you gonna hurt me?” You try to affect a pitiful tone, hoping to elicit at least a little sympathy from the bear-thing. Obviously, he doesn't respond. It's not clear whether he's capable of speech, but it seems unlikely. It's useless to ask him open-ended questions. The wheels on the gurney continue to clatter and you start to feel like you’re on some vaguely slanted surface. You wish you could see where you were going. 

5.0.5 grunts encouragingly and pushes you a little faster. You feel dizzy.

The gurney stops with a clang. You’ve hit some sort of threshold that 5.0.5 lifts you up and over, still strapped tight to the board. Then, you’re wheeled another short distance before coming to an upright stop. With one last affectionate sniff of your hair, you hear 5.0.5 pad away. 

“Don’t go!” You cry out, though you know it won’t make a difference. A door clangs shut somewhere behind you. Silence once more. 

Trying not to be too consumed by utter despair, you struggle against your bonds, eventually resigning yourself to wait for someone else. Fortunately, you aren’t kept waiting long. The sound of footsteps encroaches from somewhere distant. 

The room you’re in sounds vast and barren. Each tiny sound echoes. The steps cease nearby. You can tell by the way he shuffles around in his flat-soled shoes, it's that asshole Flug.

“Well, well, well. I see 5.0.5 has taken a liking to you! Have any good dreams?” 

Flug seems to have gotten right in your face, judging by the proximity of his irritating, smug voice. He smells like ozone and those horrible nitrile gloves. As soon as you gauge his distance, you waste no time. 

You hock and spit.

Judging by the immediate caliber of Flug’s disgust, it was a perfect shot. You hear him rapidly patter away, then the sound of a faucet and wrinkling paper. 

“Give me my eyes back, you little sicko!” You screech in his approximate direction. Flug’s voice echoes back at you from across the room, clearly pissed.

“You’re the sicko! Disgusting. Anyway, I-I’m actually taller than you.” 

You roll your eyes at his pedantic comeback, not that he notices.

“And before you jump to conclusions, I didn't remove anything. We merely have some tests to run that you may find _eye-opening._ ” You hear him snicker to himself. Unbelievable. 

“That’s not funny, Flug. I can’t see shit.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. Ask, and ye shall _perceive_. Hehe.” 

Flug approaches you again, this time keeping well out of spitting range. He’s still chuckling at his stupid puns. Setting your lips in a firm line, you wait until he’s close before you respond.

“Okay, okay, I got one. Ready? _Eye-_ m going to fucking choke you.”

It’s not that funny, but you cackle anyway.

Flug sighs. “You wish.” 

You then feel his slick gloves on your face, the removal of bandages, and hard pressure on each of your eye sockets like he’s pushing on them with his thumbs. It hurts, he’s probably doing this to you deliberately.

Suddenly, blinding white light floods your vision. You gasp in pain and squint your throbbing eyes, trying to duck your head though it’s still strapped in. Flug’s paper bag bobbles in front of you, in and out of focus. Though by now the head pain’s been practically constant, the brightness of the room makes your headache more intense than before. You're still a bit delirious from the sedation.

The room you’ve been moved to looks kind of like a racquetball court, only bigger. The walls are bright and clean, the floor is a grey steel, and there’s a blank white wall in front of you with a large target stenciled in the center. 

Flug circles around to your rear and unbuckles a few straps. Unbalanced and freed, you stumble off the gurney and almost fall. So you guessed right; you are in a straitjacket. Somehow, you don't think you warrant this level of restraint.

Flug stabilizes you with a hand on your shoulder. Once you get your balance, he gently tugs one of the buckles on the jacket, leading you to a little marked spot in the front-center of the room.

“Stand right here and don’t move, I’ll be right back.” He shuffles away towards a door in the side wall. Visible through the neighboring glass pane is a small, equipment-filled room. Flug assumes an authoritative position over some unknown control panel and starts tapping at various buttons.

The lights dim a little, and you hear the whirr of a projector. 

A 20-foot tall picture of a horrible rotting piglet stares at you from the wall in ultra-high resolution, painted bulls-eye obscured by a maggot-carved snout. Even in black and white, it’s still rancid beyond belief. You recoil in disgust, immediately feeling ill.

Flug’s voice booms from a box above the control room window. His microphone squeals as he talks, paper bag too close to the receiver. 

“Don’t look away! This is a test! Keep your eyes trained on the center target!” The doctor’s voice is heavy with feedback. You feel nauseated.

“What is this, a test of stomach strength? Because I don’t think I’m going to pass. The raccoon was bad enough,” You call out towards the window, grimacing.

Flug sounds amused, the sound crackling through the speaker. “Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Ah, seems like ages ago.”

His casual dismissal of your torturous first night makes you bristle in anger.

“Speaking of ages ago, how long was I out for this time? You can’t keep drugging me whenever you feel like it, you know. Gonna have to start calling you Doctor Roofie.” 

You glare at Flug through the window and see him aggressively shake a finger in the direction of the target.

“Don’t you _dare_ call me that! You were only out for a few hours. And I told you to keep your eyes on the wall, it’s for the safety of us both!” You see him jab a button and the feedback magnifies in volume. You’d clutch your head if your arms weren’t pinned down. There's something vaguely Kubrickian about Flug's little experiment and so far, you're not a fan.

The photo changes, and changes again. Your head immediately starts churning with an even more horrible headache, that now-familiar buzz returning to its place between your ears. Each picture is uniquely more horrible than the last. 

Atom bombs, decaying piles of corpses, eviscerated cattle, burn victims, plane crashes, meat in a grinder ad infinitum. They stream by in a nightmarish blur, the advanced prosthetic eyes of course grabbing crystal clear shots of every single one. The test must only be seconds, but it feels like minutes, hours.

The pressure continues to build inside your head and that staticky buzz intensifies to a high-pitched whine, then there’s a rush of blazing hot air like someone blowing smoke through the channels of your brain. You're unable to stop yourself from screaming.

Your vision cuts to whiteness. The air around you is charged with heat.

When your sight finally returns, the opposite wall is destroyed. Your eye-beams seem to have done considerably more damage this time. A smoking, charred crater gapes at you from where the slideshow and target once was. This hole is many times larger than the one Demencia had triggered. 

You stagger a bit, legs devoid of strength. With the buzzing sound absent, your brain feels dull and empty. The silent void encapsulates your senses just like last time.

Flug bursts through the control room door and sprints toward you with a clipboard in hand, practically tripping over his shoes in his hurry.

“That was _fucking_ amazing,” he exclaims as he pokes at the debris on the floor. It’s the first time you’ve heard him use a dirty word. Guess he isn’t so much of a prig, after all. 

Dizzy and sore in the face, you manage a loose nod in agreement before dropping to your knees.

“Not in front of the children,” you remind the doctor, voice barely above a whisper.

Flug picks his way over to you, around the blackened plaster. You swear he’s grinning from beneath his bag. From this angle you can almost see the outline of his chin as he approaches, but he heaves you to your feet before you can get a better look.

“Okay, so I’ll obviously have to do some more repeats of that test, but that was _way, way_ more powerful than I thought it would be! It surpassed all my expectations! I can't believe there isn't more damage to the soft tissue. Your brain's physical reaction to the eyes might be an anomaly, or the prosthetics may have kick-started some sort of augmentary support, perhaps bolstered by your immune system? It makes no sense. I don't even know, but I have to find out. Incredible."

You shake your head in disorientation, barely able to keep up with what he’s saying. Flug’s talking a mile a minute at you and is gripping your waist in a weirdly passionate show of enthusiasm. You suffer through his babble, dimly aware that what he's saying most certainly means you'll have to spend more time being poked and prodded by Flug like some sort of lab rat. The thought is repellent.

You wonder if you've made a mistake, campaigning so fervently to keep these eyes. All that hard work you did to sabotage the mine, coding that malware, just so Flug can have his cake and eat it too. Indignation swells in your chest once more as you think back to how inconsiderate he's been, how flippantly he's played around with your body and brain.

Flug, still talking, is oblivious to your discomfort. This only serves to further prove your point.

"I still need to do a few x-rays and some more brain scans, but first, how do you feel? Describe the sensations before and after firing.” 

_Thenthations._ His lisp gets more pronounced when he’s excited. You nudge at his chest with your shoulder. 

“Can you maybe let me out of the straitjacket, first?” You ask calmly. Inside, you're boiling over.

Flug, obviously embarrassed, immediately lets go and starts pulling at the various buckles to free you. He’s been flustered into silence, which you’re grateful for. His excitement isn’t exactly contagious.

Finally, the moment you’ve been waiting so patiently for. You smile gratefully as he pulls the sleeves off your constricted arms. With an indulgent sigh of relief, you give a big, slow, luxurious stretch in front of the doctor.

Flug averts his eyes and gives an awkward little cough, shifting from side to side. 

“Okay, uhm. Time for post-testing x-rays, now. Ready?” He asks, almost timidly. 

You turn to face him, flexing your wrists and fingers. Here we go.

“Sure, sure. Just one more thing,” you respond cheerfully. Flug glances back at you, confused.

_SLAP_

Your open palm connects with his cheek through the bag, and the immense force of the bitchslap you serve actually tears a horizontal slice through the paper. It reverberates sharply through the room like a gunshot.

Flug stumbles away from you, but he’s not quick enough. You pounce with all the savagery of a panther, and the two of you topple to the floor amidst the rubble. Wrestling him under your knees, you grab the collar of his sweaty t-shirt and give him a vigorous shake. 

“That’s for treating me like a fucking animal, you creep,” you seethe at the scientist underfoot. You want to say more, but that hit was just so satisfying you're momentarily at a loss for words. At any rate, you think you've made your point clear.

Flug emits an agitated groan, putting his hands to his face. When he feels the tear in the bag, his eyes widen in horror from beneath his goggles. He seems more distressed at his compromised headgear than by the royal whack to the face he received.

The rip in the paper is just large enough for you to catch a glimpse of a slapped-raw cheek and a gnarled, fissured mouth. There’s a gap in his front teeth.

Obviously, you’ve been curious for a while. It's unwise of you to pause and take a closer look, though, because Flug takes this moment to fiercely shove you off.

Caught off balance, you slam sideways into the ground. The wind’s knocked out of you, you wheeze for air.

Flug tackles you down with his entire weight, seizing your wrists so you can’t hit him again. You laugh hoarsely in his face, triumphant despite the pain in your chest and the short-lived fight. At least you got him good.

Flug’s lower jaw is partly visible, his bag crumpled and askew. He’s breathing heavily, large facial scars contorting his mouth into a bizarre snarl. His neck is sweaty, tufts of hair plastered to its sides.

“I definitely didn’t deserve that,” he mutters down at you. You’d beg to disagree.

A couple seconds pass. You wince, preparing for a hit, anything in retaliation. It doesn’t come. 

Flug drops your wrists and gets up, huffily patting dust and bits of soot from his clothes. Slowly regaining your breath, you prop yourself onto your elbows and peer at him suspiciously from your position on the floor. As far as you're concerned, you still won this fight.

Flug's turned his back, ostensibly so not to offer you any more views of his partially-exposed wreck of a face.

“You. Piss me off. So goddamn much.” 

Flug’s remark is monotone, clearly still a little breathless. He turns on his heel and disappears back into the little control room without another word. 

You hear the sound of water running, and Flug soon emerges with a fresh new bag and a dixie cup filled with tap water. He deposits it at your side and backs away quickly, making sure to keep his distance in case you want a rematch. 

Baffled, you scrutinize the cup and its contents, then look back up at Flug. He crosses his arms and stares right back. Neither of you say anything for a little while. 

“I’m sorry—” 

“Sorry for—” 

Hm. 

The both of you lapse into an uncomfortable silence. You eye the cup again, pointedly. Flug rolls his eyes in exasperation.

“It’s not drugged, if that’s why you’re hesitating.” You doubt he even understands why you'd be so concerned.

After another dubious glance, you give in and down the cool water in one gulp. It helps your headache, at least. As a peace offering, Flug could have done worse. Plus, now that you’ve aired at least one of your grievances, you’re feeling a bit calmer.

Flug also seems to have relaxed a little more. He cautiously steps closer and takes a deep breath, like he’s struggling to articulate his thoughts.

“I’m sorry, that you feel... Um. Like I’ve m-mistreated you during your time here. Trust me when I say that everything, and I mean _everything_ I’ve done to you, is for your benefit and/or safety. I don't want to hurt you.”

Flug’s strange apology emerges hesitant and stuttered, then in one long mashed-together thought. He stares at his shoes the whole time. He must not do this often. 

You raise an eyebrow. Not only does he not address any specifics, his awkward phrasing seemingly absolves him of being responsible for your feelings. It's clear he doesn't know what he's supposed to be sorry for.

Flug repeats himself, a bit more assertively.

"I don't want to hurt you."

You want to believe him, but you don't know if you can.

It’s not acceptable by any means, but it’s probably the best apology someone with an ego of Flug’s magnitude can muster. Neither of you are going to get anywhere by appealing to each other's morals, after all.

Sighing, you decide it’s only right to go for a truce, as it's clear that besides Black Hat, Flug holds all the cards in this place. You need to start making an effort to stay on his good side if you want to stay intact. 

Your apology is much more concise.

“Sorry I spit at you, and hit you, and ripped your bag. It was unprofessional and mean of me. I’d like to fight together less and work together more. Is that possible?” 

Now it’s Flug’s turn to raise a brow.

“Possible? Of course it’s possible, that goes without saying—” 

You cut him off, perturbed.

“Well, actually, no. No it doesn’t, because you drugged me and stole my work. You know, in case you forgot. I’m pissed about that. Thoughts?” 

At your retort, Flug adopts an unreadable expression. It seems he hasn’t even considered your perception of the issue. You wonder if he's ashamed of that.

“Yes, well, given your aggression, you hadn’t really earned my trust at that point, had you? And you’re still on thin ice, by the way. I won't tolerate any more idiotic violence.”

As usual, he’s defensive. You'll stop slapping him when he stops kidnapping you.

“As for your virus, well. I’m not excluding you, despite what you may think. I'm not a plagiarist, you know. We should expect to hear back from the miners any moment, as soon as they realize the extent of the damage. How do you know I wouldn’t have given you credit? I was able to execute it flawlessly, only thanks to your expertise.” 

If you’re not misreading his tone, he almost sounds contrite. Almost.

You nod. “Huh. That’s a really weird way to say ‘thank you’, Flug.”

“... _Doctor_ Flug.” 

You whip the dixie cup at his head, which he nimbly dodges.

Before you two can devolve back into passive-aggressive squabbling, a loud, shrill shriek echoes from the hallway outside, causing both of you to jump. The sound pierces through the thick metal. It must have been close.

With a singular glance at one another, you and the doctor make a run for the large security doors on the opposite end of the test lab, towards the direction of the terrible scream. There’s no one outside.

“Hello? 5.0.5? Demencia?” you call out down the dimly lit corridor. Nothing. Flug produces a diabolical-looking taser from the pocket of his jeans. 

Yikes. He had that the whole time?

An alarming, gurgling sound from somewhere in the darkness down the hall makes you both jump once more. Peering around the far corner is Demencia, strangely limp. She looks off, somehow. As in, more than usual. Flug gasps in horror from behind you. 

Demencia shuffles forward, zombielike. Her eyes emit a strange, otherworldly glow, reminiscent of a bioluminescent squid. Her mouth is agape, her arms stiff at her sides. She croaks something, voice strangely bifurcated like there's someone else talking through her vocal chords.

“Black… Hat. Where is Black Hat.”

Maybe she’s not possessed? Scary demeanor aside, that’s not necessarily out of character for her. 

Flug assumes a stance that’s probably meant to be intimidating, but which his lanky form doesn’t quite permit. He points the active taser at Demencia like he’s done this before. You notice he's still behind you, using you as a shield.

“Show yourself, demon!” Flug yelps. 

Demencia’s crazed eyes fixate on you both. She shuffles forward, neck cracking.

“Who… dares address me in such a disreputable manner? Why, I never.” To your bafflement, Demencia seems to have cultivated a strange, stilted British accent. 

Before you can form a reaction, she mutters something else, familiar to you yet so completely unexpected.

It's a safe bet to say that Demencia doesn't speak Chinese, much less that old dialect. Why is she suddenly... no, it can’t be. You gasp.

Demencia then continues on in that peculiar, fusty, aristocratic cadence. Yep, scratch your earlier theory. She's totally possessed.

“I say, I’ve never been treated so confoundedly in my entire life. What in heaven's name am I doing in such— such _clownish_ attire?” 

Flug is at a loss for words. You’re confused, but something catches your eye.

An object dangles from Demencia’s limp-wristed hand. You squint to get a better look, but there’s no mistaking it for anything else.

The journal. 

Your journal, or rather, Augustus’ journal. The pages look rumpled, the spine broken. 

There’s no time to think. You leap forward, too quick for Flug to grab you, hold you back. He cries out your name, but there’s no stopping you. Demencia, still possessed, seems to have lost most of her reflexes. She makes no move to defend herself.

You bolt towards her and swiftly kick the book from Demencia’s hand, disintegrating it and sending sheets of yellowed notepaper fluttering through the hall. You hear a rumble, a low roar in your ears like the rush of hellfire.

The act of punting the notebook has the immediate reaction of snuffing out the light previously hosted in Demencia’s eyes. She collapses numbly to the floor, like an unconscious drunk. Flug races to her side, checking her vitals. Thankfully she seems unharmed, at least physically. Flug shakes her shoulders, but she's out cold.

As the last of the journal's dismembered contents settle to the ground, you swear there’s a disembodied whisper in the air, just like what you’d heard in the office the moment Black Hat placed that book in your hands.

Elsewhere, a few floors above, Black Hat senses something amiss. His eyebrows quirk, testing the air. He’s always finely attuned to the aura of this house, and it’s unusually hellish today. There’s a strong whiff of ectoplasm. Some sort of errant, unbonded soul, looking for a host.

How immensely displeasing. 

Gritting his fangs, he supposes it’s time to intervene.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Told you there wasn't a lot of plot this time lmao. Black Hat, hurry back to whup our asses pls. 
> 
> And by the way, thank you to every single person who's given this story a chance and liked it enough to tell me about it. I'm over the moon with all the positive responses, I never thought this would garner so much attention! I can only hope you all continue to stick with me throughout this weird journey lol. 
> 
> -Ginger


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